Short Film: Ernest and Bertram (USA, 2001)

June 30, 2014, 8:54 am

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Here's a fun little video we stumbled upon purely by accident and promptly felt that it must be shared. Inspired by Lillian Hellman's play (and later movie version of) The Children's Hour (1961 / trailer) and, of course, Sesame Street, Ernest and Bertram pretty much fell off the map after its original release because of a cease & desist order for copyright infringement from SS.

Director Peter Spears co-wrote the tragic short with T.C. Smith; Spears has since gone on to direct the "quirky" comedy Careless (2007 / trailer). Enjoy.

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R.I.P.: Harry H. Novak, Part IV: 1967

July 4, 2014, 4:15 am

≫ Next: The Terror (USA, 1963)

≪ Previous: Short Film: Ernest and Bertram (USA, 2001)

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January 12, 1928 — March 26, 2014

"When I was a kid, my Daddy told me, 'There's a buyer for everything.' And I lived to find out that he was right."
Harry H. Novak


Part II— 1956 to 1964
Part III— 1965 to 1966

Harry H. Novak, alongside David F Friedman (24 December 1923 — 14 February 2011) one of the great (s)exploitation kings of the last half of the 20th century, died 26 March 2014 at the age of 86. 

A detailed career review of all the projects Harry H. Novak foisted upon the American public would be Sisyphean task at best and hardly possible, as no full and unequivocal list exists. What follows is a review of the films that we found that, for the most part, probably had Novak's involved somewhere along the way — and some that may not have. It is definitely not a complete list, and definitely not infallible, it is merely culled from sources reliable and unreliable that we found online. We also in no way suggest that the given release dates are the correct ones, they are merely the first ones we found.
If you know any we missed, feel free to send the title...

Mondo Mod
(1967, dir. Peter Perry Jr.)

Opening Credits:

A Wasted Life took a look at this film in our R.I.P. career review of the obscure California exploitation filmmaker surfer Paul Hunt (14 Oct. 1943 — 13 Sept. 2011), where we wrote: "Paul Hunt appears as himself in this 'documentary'. Dvd Drive-In says: 'Cruising into Mondo Mod to the strains of its cheesy title tune, one would expect a fabulous time capsule of outta-sight fashions, far-out hairdos, and all the hip dialogue you can stand. But instead, Mondo Mod is rather a documentary not aimed at the Mods it documents, but the outsiders who want to be hip and would like a 10-step program narrated by L.A. DJ Harve Humble in the process. Sure, there's footage of the Whiskey a Go Go and its terrible house bands, a kooky boutique called 'Belinda's,' and some drugged-out footage of a stripper and a love-in, but the Mod comparisons stop there. What does go-kart racing, karate, bikers, and protests have to do with the Mod scene'?"

Trailer: 




 The Slave Widow
(1967, dir. Mamoru Watanabe [as "Yazuru Watanabe"])

Original Japanese title: Dorei mibojin. Something Weird once released this as a Novak film — it is now available from Cinema Epoch — so we assume that, as is the case with Kôfun!! / Naked Pursuit [looked at later in this career review] and others, he must have purchased the Japanese art house Pink film and released it in the US with a misleading and marketable title. One only needs to see the first two minutes to know Slave Widow is more art than sleaze.

Over at Bullets 'n' Babes, Rick Stanko explains the plot: "When a woman's husband kills himself, she is forced to become the sexual slave of a wealthy businessman in order to settle her debts. When the wealthy man's son also falls in love with her, everything gets a lot more complicated. This early Pink film takes its time to create an aesthetic environment, not just a depraved one."

In Montreal, the goblinhairedguy also finds that there is more than just depravity in the movie, which he describes as "impressionistic eroticism": "The plot is pure soap-opera (a young widow [Noriko Tatsumi] is forced to become the mistress of her late husband's creditor), but this picture is quite haunting thanks to its skilful, artistic handling. The inky chiaroscuro lighting and the impressionistic soundtrack (chamber music and natural sounds) beautifully complement the languid pace. Obviously, its main selling points are the erotic scenes, which are successfully intense not because of any explicitness (the nudity is very tame), but thanks to their focus on the woman's ecstasy (surprising even herself) and the shadowy close-ups of merging flesh. An interesting Eastern counterpoint to Joe Sarno's American contributions to the genre of the same era."

While It Lasts, The Full Movie: 

Way Out Topless
(1967, dir. Lewis S. Francis)

"Now, women from all walks of life, the fat ones and the skinny ones, join in a common cause. They are here to make themselves as beautiful and as appealing as possible to their male partner."

The only movie "Lewis S. Francis" seems to have ever made. Something Weird released this as part of a double feature "Harry Novak presents" video/DVD (now no longer available) coupled with Street of a Thousand Pleasures (1972), so we can only assume Novak / Boxoffice was involved and it belongs in this career review.

Thank you, Last Drive-In on the Left for the GIF above; they say "It's Boobsapoppin with Way Out Topless, a celebration of the Sixties Go-Go Scene that's more funny than sexy today. Girls with Beehives and Bouffant shake it up on the dance floor in this all out Go-Go Mania Blitz that takes you inside the Sin Spots of Baltimore and Washington D.C. See sexy strippers strut their stuff. You're invited to join in the fun."
Creature from the Blog Lagoon…in 3-D! was not impressed: "Practically unrelated narration accompanies opening scenes of naked ladies exercising at a gym, and then we're shuttled across the country to peep in on strip clubs and go-go bars in various major cities. If you were ever curious about the strip clubs of Baltimore circa 1967, this is the movie for you. Most of the girls on display are more frightening than sexy and would seem quite at home alongside Divine and Mink Stole in one of John Waters' early efforts. Don't confuse WOT with Russ Meyer's infinitely more watchable Mondo Topless! (1966), which is still quite sexy today."
Best name of the strippers featured: "Pussy Kate"— followed by "Star Lite".

Trailer to One of John Waters' Great Early Efforts —
Desperate Living (1977): 

Cool It Baby
(1967, dir. Lou Campa)

Written by Lou Palisano and the obscure (and dead) auteur Joseph Marzano, who that same year (1967) also co-wrote wrote and directed Venus in Furs. The online zine Funhouse is of the opinion that "Lou Campa makes William Rotsler look like Russ Meyer. This seedy little roughie oozes from the very beginning. It's almost all done in medium shots or close-up to save on the need for sets or extras. [...] All of the real strange stuff is described or off screen. This one still is a pretty lurid affair."
But speaking of "director" Campa, Flickhead says that "Contrary to what's listed in the opening credits, the picture was not directed by Campa. (On the posters and publicity, the nonexistent 'Louis Champion' is credited.) Marzano was asked if he'd like to do it, but declined when told that the camera (for whatever reason) needed to remain stationary on the tripod. The film ultimately had no director, and screenwriter Lou Palisano delivered an unfinished script which was fleshed out by Marzano. Joe stayed on as an actor and directed some sequences, [Lew] Waldeck directed others, and Campa reportedly lounged on a sofa throughout. Few of them cared about who got credit for what, Joe later recalled, because they simply had fun doing it, feeling as if they were making a Monogram or PRC picture back in the 40s."
The plot, according to DVD Verdict: "When Connie Price (Barbara Ellen) finds herself the victim of the tag team blackmailing pair known as Monica (Beverly Baum) and Herman (Joseph Marzano), she turns to the police for help. Thankfully, her understanding husband (Bhob Stewart), who just happens to be a detective with local law enforcement, takes on the case (he also forgives his gal for the sex film that started this experience in extortion). Eventually, we learn that Monica is a mean, vicious vamp who places men under her power with a combination of humiliation and flabby thighs. Herman just so happened to be involved in a local nudie cutie camera club when he runs into the maniacal miss. When they are both pinched for pornography, the local DA (Bob James) has a prurient proposition: He will hire the couple to run his own personal 'house of pleasure.' They supply the expertise; he will add in some juicy jailbait. One such unlucky foundling is the newly orphaned Valerie (Christine Cybelle). She thinks that the local prosecutor is cutting her a break making Monica and Herman her new foster family. But according to the film, the only thing this duo fosters is sleaze. Soon, their newfound ward is participating in all manner of perverted play dates, including a starring role in a weird warped near-Satanic sex sacrifice. It's up to the fuzz to put a stop to all the group groping. Someone has to tell these craven criminals to Cool It, Baby."

Trailers to Venus in Furs (1967) and Cool It, Baby: 




Venus in Furs
(1967, writ. & dir Joseph Marzano)

Marzano's pretentious masterpiece? As DVD Talk says, "Venus is Furs, is an eccentric, dada-ist step that goes completely over the oddity edge."
After Cool It, Baby producer Campo was so satisfied that he gave Marzano $10,000 to do another picture — this one. Flickhead, of the opinion that "given the opportunity and freedom, Joe [Marzano] could have easily been a respected, major American filmmaker," knows some history to the film: "Given that money and a five-day shooting schedule, Joe got together with his friend Barbara Ellen to write the screenplay. The first dialogue sequence follows the novel verbatim, but after that the only connection between the book and the film is the title. Hired to make sexploitation, Joe instead seized the opportunity to put his personal demons and desires, pent-up disillusionments, failed relationships and fetishes all on 35mm for worldwide distribution, using Venus in Furs (1967) to create an art film that sacrifices boobs for Bergman. [...] Perhaps puzzled by what Joe was filming or jealous of the attention he'd been getting, Campa began interfering and economizing. He wanted to change the title from Venus in Furs to the senseless Cherished Women. For a scene set on the grand stairway outside the New York Public Library, Joe had a Fellini-esque vision of dozens of girls running toward the camera. Campa agreed and lined up the talent, but on the day of the shoot he arrived with just three women. (After making a few phone calls, Joe rounded up two more for a total of five.) As Cool It Baby had lap dissolves and fades, Joe wanted to use these effects but Campa refused to pay for them. He also wouldn't allow Joe to shoot some necessary expository scenes, and instead had him pad a rambling, un-erotic orgy sequence. And when the film was completed, Joe, realizing Campa would try to shaft him, threatened to destroy the picture unless he got paid."

Trailers to Venus in Furs and Cool It, Baby (1967):

Like most who see Venus in Furs, DVD Drive-in likes the movie: "Now enter the hazy dream world of Venus in Furs, inspired by the famous novel but with very little connection otherwise. This is a weird one. Imagine Michael Findlay's Take Me Naked (1966): an arthouse film with touches of depraved sex and grotesque violence. A muscular hunk works selling shoes, but has a very overactive imagination. He falls asleep while reading Venus in Furs and dreams of Venus herself, speaking to him in poetry while he caresses her feet and waits on her as a servant. He also stares at women on the subway and imagines kissing and making love to them. After spending his day waiting on beautiful flirtatious women on his knees, he picks up Marna (Barbara Ellen), a mysterious woman in the library, who invites him to her secluded mansion to join her assorted other guests for a weekend of sensual depravity. There are really no words to describe Venus in Furs. The best way to sum up the film would be: the sexual fever dream of a repressed bookworm. Set in a sprawling Gothic mansion where each room holds a different scenario of kinky pleasure, each successive minute of the film throws more surprising visuals at the viewer. The film includes homosexual overtones, dream women lounging on the lawn, muscle worship, bondage, beating, leather boots, foot fetishists, voyeurs, sado-masochism, lesbians, sex with food, bathing, and an encyclopedia of other sexual turn-ons."

NSFW Trailer to Michael Findlay's Take Me Naked (1966):

Take Me Naked - Trailervon The_Astounding_Dr_Wollmen 



Free Love Confidential
(1967, dir. "Gordon Heller")

Assuming the name to be real, it seems that this obscure sexploitation flick was the only one Gordon Heller ever made; scriptwriter "Sanford White" seems to have been involved in a film or two more.
DVD Drive-In calls the movie "Yet another unsung cult classic waiting to be discovered by sexploitation fiends, [...] deliciously filthy fun and that's kind of surprising considering that most kinky treats in the genre were coming out of New York around this time (with the exception of Bob Cresse and David Friedman's whipping-obsessed films). [...] The plot twist of transforming the villain from a giggling pothead photographer to a towering butch lesbian in leather is unique and unexpected. Mickey is the real star of the film, with her deep booming voice and giant blonde hairdo, and her show-stopping dance routine at the Club Mojo, dressed in a zebra-print shirt, leather pants and boots, and brandishing a whip, is marvelous. [...] The stark black-and-white photography is quite marvelous and surprisingly professional-looking, and be sure to watch for some attractive lighting effects during the LSD sequence. All in all, Free Love Confidential is a great way to spend 66 minutes of your life, and a valuable time capsule film packed with sexy women, drugs, and kinky shenanigans, capped off with a superb twist ending. Highly recommended!!"

Trailer: 

For that, DVD Talk says some films should stay "dead and buried" and that the movie features "a hideous pair of salty sea hags": "Okay flesh fans, here's the good news about Gordon Heller's Free Love Confidential. In the arena of bodkin, this is one director who bares it all — almost — and often. Sadly, the skanks he hired to do the disrobing look like rejects from the Pazuzu auditions for The Exorcist. Faces pinched up in obvious plastic surgery disaster mode and teeth tarnished by a life laced with bad liquor, loud men, and loose morals, our stars are so skuzzy they make Courtney Love look like Mother Angelica. Since we are stuck with these unattractive gals for the entire film (only Mickey makes a run for their mutt-ugly money when she disrobes and flashes her flapjacks) an exploitation fan has to make a rather difficult decision. Either they ignore the witchy woman weirdness of the duo, accept their lack of looks and get with the grinding, or just ignore this nausea all together and find a hobby. It's a flesh feast given that desirability is as important to arousal as a full frontal shot, and in rare occasions, the availability of nudity can overcome some fairly non-photogenic facets. But the two actresses here are just plain scary. This means that all that's left is the narrative, and it's a barebone bit of bullcrap that uses the blackmailing as an excuse for endless scenes of counterfeit copulating. It all grows very dull and repetitive after a while."
The plot from TCM: "Bored with their lives, Kaye (Karen Miller), the wife of a wealthy Hollywood businessman, and her close friend Gieselle (Yvette Corday) decide to answer an ad in an underground newspaper soliciting figure models with unusual talents. At Robin's (John Warren) photography studio, they are given some marijuana to smoke. They quickly become high and pose in a variety of provocative positions for the camera. After a final shooting session in which Robin joins them in the bedroom, the girls leave, and they suddenly realize that the photographer possesses incriminating evidence of their uninhibited activities. When they return the next day, they are met by a lesbian, Mickey, who forces them to submit to her embraces in exchange for the film's return. When she is finished with them, she demands $500 to complete the deal. Desperate, the women attempt to steal the money, and they are nearly caught by a guard. The next day, they finally meet Robin, who explains that he has no intention of blackmailing them, and he unrolls the spool of film before their eyes."

Lead male John Warren, by the way, began his career in England in 1947; he had his career high point with Ed Wood's Bride of the Monster (1955 / trailer / full movie), and seems to have retired after appearing as crowd filler in Don't Go in the Woods (1981).

Trailer to Don't Go in the Woods (1981): 
 



Women of Desire
(1967, dir. Vincent L. Sinclair)

Shares Only the Title —

The Shaw Brothers'Women of Desire (1974):

Both director Sinclair and screenplay author Carl Baker seem to have been one shot wonders. TV Guide explains the movie: "After being told by the cops that his wife was killed by a truck, a man reaches the bizarre conclusion that she was not on her job as a nurse but instead was working as a hooker. In flashback we see that that strange instinct is true. Upset and drinking over her losses at the racetrack, she was approached by a smooth-talking individual who convinced her where the real money was. After working a motel for a while, she met a neighbor and feared the truth would finally be exposed. She told the pimp she was quitting and promptly ran off — unfortunately for her, into the path of an oncoming truck. A film for which the term 'garbage' is too dignified a word."
According imdb, the movie features Monica Davis; she supposedly started her career with an (un-credited) appearance as a nurse in George Weiss' classic roadshow exploiter Test Tube Babies (1948 / trailer / full movie), but her first known credited appearance seems to have been in Barry Mahon's voodoo flick, The Dead Ones (1961):

Trailer to The Dead Ones (1961):

The Dead One (1961)von bmoviebabe 



Mini-Skirt Love
(1967, writ & dir. Lou Campa)
 

A rare starring role for the tragic Janet Banzet, billed here as Marie Brent, who committed suicide in 1971. DVD Drive-in points out that "There's not a miniskirt in sight in Mini-Skirt Love, but there's plenty of wild sexual kink on-hand instead. [...] This is without a doubt one of the most uncomfortable sexploitation flicks ever made, like a Joe Sarno film without the class and finesse." 

 

Dance Scene from Mini-Skirt Love:

Digitally Obsessed explains the plot and more: "After her affair with the appropriately named Peter Johnson (Nick Harrison) gets caught on film by her son (Donny Lee as "Billy"), the distraught mom (Bella Donna) tries to commit suicide with a kitchen knife, but only succeeds in 'accidentally' stabbing her understandably upset husband (Guy Sinclair). But in Campa's world, that's okay, because hubbie had already been shown getting it on with a black prostitute, so his death has a 'he had that coming' feel to it. Mommy gets shipped off to the nuthouse, and kindly, but sexually-repressed Aunt Janet (Janet Banzet aka Marie Brent) is sent to care for poor Billy. She's not there ten minutes before she's soaping up his bare ass in the shower, slinking around in see-through nighties, pleasuring herself to pictures of her sister(!) and Peter Johnson, and of course eventually hopping in the sack with the ageing teenager down the hall. The semi-incestuous nature of this is weird, even for Campa, but the late Marie Brent is actually darn good here. She plays the crazy/sexy/weird aunt with the right amount of sexploitation camp, and by the time she falls into a lusty lesbian romp with the Avon Lady (that eventually leads to an implied three-way with Billy), you know the bizarro meter is in the red. But Campa's not done, as he piles on a wacko ending involving the return of crazy mommy, a lucky milkman, and what we're supposed to assume is unimaginable suburban depravity. Fun."

Trailer to Mini-Skirt Love: 

Trailer till Miniskirt Lovefrån rstvideos trailerarkiv. 

Billy — or, rather, Donny Lee — seems to have ended his career in Doris Wishman's Double Agent 73 (1974).

Trailer to Wishman's Double Agent 73 (1974): 




Diary of a Swinger

(1967, writ & dir John & Lem Amero)
 

Novak distributed this sexploiter from the seminal, productive and relatively forgotten Amero Brothers; three years later, in 1970, they made their masterpiece Bacchanale (starring Harry Reems), and directly thereafter they advanced into hardcore porn (gay and straight), only to disappear after 1985. (Lem died of AIDS in 1989, who knows what happened to John.)

Full Movie — 

The Amero Brothers' NSFW Masterpiece Bacchanale:
Bacchanale (2006) from Sam Zimmerman on Vimeo.

One Sheet Index has the original one-sheet description: "How does a quiet girt from a small New England town become a swinger ... a straw girl, a hollow girl? Jeannie (Rita Bennett, credited "Joanna Cunningham") is twenty-one and she has had the course all the kicks ... all the glitter ... and an unsuccessful suicide attempt that finally forces her to accept psychiatric care. Through intimate flash-backs the audience sees in clinical detail all the emotionally searing events that brought her to the brink of suicide. Was it the rape? In the early morning of her womanhood, Jeannie loved to roam the bright, clean farmlands near her home. One morning she met a local farmhand ... they walked together ... talked a while then suddenly she found herself in the fragrant meadow grass ... his virile shoulders blocked the sun and in her eyes warm mist obscured the sky ... a little scream died in her throat. But was it rape? The solid farm folk didn't think so. The accusation in their eyes affirmed their knowledge of her guilt. Escape. From them, from herself. Jeannie came to New York to lose herself in the lonely crowd. There she shared an apartment with Vivian (Rose Conti), warm, knowing and self-sufficient without men. Jeannie became a secretary in a theatrical agency. Here she hoped to begin a career in the glamour industry, and here she met Jim, a smooth, handsome young actor on his way up. At first their relationship seems to be the love she needs so desperately to give and receive. But there is room in Jim's ego for only love. Jim can only take, not give. She runs from him when he tries to seduce her and it becomes obvious that he can only make love, not love. Because of her beauty, Jeannie is fair game for every male on the make. The head of the agency keeps pressuring her and finally attacks her in his office. She moves on to become a model in the shadow world of high fashion. Here the roles of the sexes are obscured and relationships superficial. Jeannie longs for Jim. She tries to reach him, but he has left town on tour. When he returns she runs to him, ready now to settle for only the appearance of a normal love affair. He takes her to an opening night party. But the party turns into a jet-set orgy. When Jeannie refuses to join Jim in the sexual fun games, Jim grabs another girl and makes love to her in front of Jeannie. Frightened, and distraught, Jeannie runs home. She surprises a burglar. Cornered, alone in her apartment, the burglar attacks and rapes her. When he escapes she makes the suicide attempt that brings her to the psychiatrist. The psychiatrist tries to help, to reach out ... but it is all too late for Jeannie, her emotional wounds are permanent ... unable now to ever enjoy healthy relations with a man, she turns reluctantly to the security of Vivian's strange, unnatural love."

Trailer: 
 



Pain and Pleasure
(1967, dir. unknown)

 

A truly obscure movie that no one seems to have ever seen, who could not find out who wrote or directed it; personally, we here at A Wasted Life have our doubts that Harry H. Novak even had anything to do with this movie, but the online magazine Funhouse says he did, and who are we to disagree. Pain and Pleasure seems to be one of two "star vehicles" for Sammy Arena (1 September 1931 — 5 December 2012), one half of the Floridian lounge act The Arena Twins.

The Arena Twins sing Judy (1961):

Previously, Sammy Arena had the lead in Enrico Blancocello's horror exploiter The Strange Fetishes (1967) and, years later, he was seen somewhere in the infamous movie Gun Fighter, aka The Amazing Mr No Legs (1979), which we took a look at in Part II of our R.I.P. career review Jim Kelly.

We searched high and low, but the only synopsis we could find for Pain and Pleasure was once again at TCM: "Sammy, a deranged alcoholic, tries to escape from his past life and the pain of his present existence by drinking, going to erotic movies, and dreaming of nude dancers. He attempts to pick up a young blonde woman who reminds him of his former wife. The girl turns him down, and he rapes another young woman in a deserted warehouse. He is later seduced by a nymphomaniac. Sammy goes to another sex exploitation film and returns to the nymphomaniac's home. She is gone, but he discovers that the blonde girl who resembles his former wife is a houseguest. He attacks the girl and discovers in horror that she is his own daughter. She kills him with a liquor bottle." Some woman by the name of "Angelique" co-stars. 

Trailer to The Amazing Mr. No Legs (1979):

Mundo depravados
(1967, writ. & dir. Herb Jeffries)

 
Opening sequence:

We took a superficial look at this movie recently in our review of Sam Newfield's The Monster Maker (1944); Newfield, one of the great one-shot directors of the Golden Age of Poverty Row directed the possible Afro-American and today unjustly under-known jazz singer Herb Jeffries (who has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6672 Hollywood Boulevard) in the first "all-colored" musical western Harlem on the Prairie (1937); Jeffries acted in a limited number of "race films" over those years, but this movie here, made 40 years after his debut in Harlem on the Prairie, is his only directorial effort. Pure cheap exploitation, it was meant as a vehicle for his then-wife, the famous stripper Tempest Storm (born February 29, 1928).

Herb Jeffries singing
Baby Won't You Please Come Home:

DVD Drive-In sort of likes the movie, but still calls Mundo depravados"One of the longest 78 minutes in sexploitation history." The Video Vacuum, on the other hand, didn't like the flick: "There's a killer running around with a stocking on his face that gets off on stabbing girls [...]. Two dim-witted sex-starved cops are on the case, but can they stop the killer before he strikes again? Mundo Depravados ([aka] World of the Depraved) is a so-so nudie mystery movie that features a good amount of tits and not much else. I think the big problem is that it tries to be a 'roughie' but it just doesn't have enough balls to get down and dirty. It's telling that the movie is called 'World of the Depraved', yet the most depraved thing in the flick (besides murders of course) is a couple of Peeping Toms. The movie also suffers greatly from the woefully unfunny comic relief cops. I think if all of their stupid banter was left on the cutting room floor in favor of letting more girls get naked, the flick could've worked. Then again, the girls in this movie are kinda rough looking. Tempest Storm in particular looks pretty busted. It also looks like gravity hasn't been very kind to her if you catch my drift."

Gravity seldom is. Currently, Tempest is still alive and retired and living in Las Vegas, but Jeffries, who turned 100 last Sept 24th, was last seen living in Wichita, Kansas, where he died on 25 May 2014.

Full movie: 




For Love and Money

(1967, dir. Donald A. Davis)
 

Donald A. Davis (7 June 1932 — 23 September 1982), aka "Don Davis", was a contemporary and pal of Ed Wood Jr whose films are pretty much of the same artistic level as the man who, as everyone knows, made Plan 9 from Outer Space (in which Davis makes a short, un-credited appearance as drunk leaving a bar).

Trailer to Plan 9 from Outer Space (1959):

For Love and Money is based on an Ed Wood Jr sex novel The Sexecutives (Private Edition 457, credited to "David L. Westermier", cover art by Paul Radar); according to Cinema Head Cheese, "The film rights to The Sexecutives were purchased by Don A. Davis and turned into a film, with a screenplay by Wood, [...]. Suffice it to say that Wood could make even sex boring."

According to Dead 2 Rights, "The movie's plot hinges on a crime ring of sexy young female blackmailers under the employ of Ms. Irene Kelly (Janice Kelly), who runs what might be considered a combination escort-and-temp agency, renting out the services of secretaries and 'convention hostesses' to horny, middle-aged businessmen. What these fellows don't realize is that the young ladies they've hired are not just there to 'serve' them. In fact, they're industrial espionage agents, either stealing hush-hush company information or putting powerful men in compromising positions so that they can later be blackmailed. And what the girls themselves don't realize is that the police are wise to them and have been tapping their phone calls and secretly recording their trysts. Between the girls spying on the businessmen and the cops spying on the girls, a good deal of For Love & Money is devoted to shots of hidden microphones and secreted cameras, and there are many minutes of screen time devoted to people electronically eavesdropping on the conversations — and love-making sessions — of others.

Among the women who don't get naked enough in the movie is the legendary and eternally popular red-headed nude model Michelle Angelo, who according to imdb "Began pin-up modeling as a way to help finance her husband's college education." That's her above, but not from the movie.

Theme Song to For Love and Money,
written by Jim & Chet Moore and sung by Jose Siemens: 
 



The Girl with Hungry Eyes

(1967, writ. & dir. William Rotsler)
   

"The girls who played both sides of the fence!"

The tagline isn't really all that correct — Surprise! Surprise! Surprise! — as only one gal plays both sides of the fence. Aka Face of Sin.

NSFW Trailer to The Girl with Hungry Eyes:

Trailer till The Girl with the Hungry Eyes från rstvideos trailerarkiv.

BFI reduces the film to a terse description, "Strip-tease without plot", while at Movies About Girls, in his long pan of the movie, Ken McIntyre is a bit more detailed in what he dislikes: "William Rotsler (RIP) [...] wrote and directed this woozy, wrong-headed snoozer about an snarly butch lesbian and her tender girl-toy. It wobbles precariously between half-assed morality tale and balls-first exploitation, but never really commits to either. So what's left? Mush, pretty much. [...] So, clearly there's a 'moral' here. And the moral is: All Lesbians are Evil. Also, All Men are Beasts, but at least they're, you know, normal beasts. Welcome to the 60s! Although it started out strong, hinting at a no-budget, Sapphic-centered Faster Pussycat (1965) cop, Girl With the Hungry Eyes quickly devolves into a series of long and pointless flashbacks that pad the running time, but do nothing to advance the story. It's not particularly sleazy or lurid, either, especially given the era it sprang from. It does, however, prominently feature the exquisite bosoms of Vicky Dee [aka Adele Rein] — to say nothing of her still cutting-edge, two-toned punk-chick haircut — so that's something. It's not much, but it's something."

Tigercat (Cathy Crowfoot) kills Tom (Scott Avery):

And the plot? Slashers, Starlets and Sleaze goes into detail: "Kitty (Adele Rein [billed as 'Vicky Dee']) finds herself on the run from her bitchy butch girlfriend Tigercat (Cathy Crowfoot) after a heavy make-out session with hitchhiker Tom (Scott Avery) draws Tigercat's ire. She runs off into the woods to get away from her sneering lesbian partner and plays slap the salami with Tom which triggers the voyeuristic Tigercat's delusions imagining her flogging Kitty against a tree. This sends Tiger into a murderous rage bashing Tom's head in. She assures Kitty that everything is fine and no one needs to know what happened and reminds her of the better times in the relationship that Kitty wanted to escape. They go back home leaving the dead man lying in the woods." After that, Kitty takes a shower, Pat Barrington shows up to get naked at a lesbian b-day party, more relationship stress and Kitty runs to her old ex Brian (William Rotsler), Tigercat searches for her and eventually the film ends, unspectacularly.

Look carefully at the cherry lickers at the party and you probably won't recognize a young Charlotte Stewart, a good ten years before she gave birth to the monster baby in David Lynch's Eraserhead (1977 / trailer). The same year as this movie, Adele Rein ("Kitty") — the blond babe above — also appeared as the buxom daughter Coral in Russ Meyer's Common Law Cabin (aka How Much Lovin' Does a Normal Couple Need?). 

Trailer to Russ Meyer's Common Law Cabin: 

 

My Body Hungers

(1967, writ & dir Joe Sarno)

"A Lace Garterbelt Becomes An Instrument For Murder!" 

Aka My Body Cries and The Lace Rope. This Joe Sarno movie is not found on most on-line lists of movies that Harry Novak was involved in, but it is found listed at one source, an online magazine called Funhouse, which claims he distributed it; a statement supported by TCM, which says the movie was distributed by Boxoffice International, Novak's company.

The good ol'One Sheet Index offers the original teaser storyline for My Body Hungers: "A small New England town explodes into lurid nationwide headlines with the violent death of Janet Ted (Geraldine Baron), a hostess at the notorious High Roost Lodge, a roadhouse and strip joint, situated on the outskirts. [...] At the time of Janet Teel's murder, her younger sister, Marcia (Gretchen Rudolph), is hitchhiking across country for a reunion with Janet, whom she hasn't seen in over a year. [...] From the local newspaper, Marcia is shocked to the point of hysteria when she reads the lurid details of her sister's death. She is incensed by the report that her sister was a girl of low moral standards and vows to find out who killed her sister and why, convinced that when the mystery is solved the licentious charges against Janet's reputation will be erased. [...] She applies for the job as hostess vacated by her sister and after some interrogation by the owner and manager of the lodge, Joan Reynolds (Tammy Latour), a cunning, outspoken woman, Marcia is employed. While working at the lodge, Marcia makes it her business to get friendly with anybody who had been friendly with Janet, mixing in with the "B" girls and floor show strippers in an effort to get information. [...] Lt. Loring (John Aristedes) is somewhat annoyed, although obviously attracted to this beautiful newcomer who is trying to play detective, but the question 'Why,' keeps everybody guessing. Marcia manages to get involved with George Harvey (Tony King), the son of the wealthy and possessive Mavis Harvey (Bella Donna), who runs the local newspaper. [...] Marcia is assaulted and raped by an unknown assailant one evening as she steps out of her bath. She confides this bit of information to Lt. Loring, who keeps a close watch on all that goes on at the lodge. After two attempts are made upon Marcia's life, the killer is finally drawn out into the open..."

 

Also from Sarno & Made the Same Year —
Ride the Wild Pink Horse:

 



Red Roses of Passion

 (1967, writ & dir Joe Sarno)

This Joe Sarno movie is not found on most on-line lists of movies that Harry Novak was involved in, but it is found listed at one source, an online magazine called Funhouse, which claims he distributed it; a statement supported by TCM, which says the movie was distributed by Boxoffice International, Novak's company.

Film France says: "Red Roses of Passion is an American fantasy film [...]. Our overall rating for Red Roses of Passion is: good, not a bad effort, perhaps a little lacking in depth and originality — not a masterpiece but still well worth watching."
TCM has the plot: "Carla (Patricia McNair as "Laurene Claire") lives with her moralizing Aunt Julie (Bella Donna as "Liz Love") and her prudish cousin Tracey (Laura London). Carla's friend Enid (Carol Holleck) advises her to see Martha Kag (Helena Clayton), a mystic who will help Carla with her family problems. Carla does not realize that Enid is employed by Martha to lure young women to her séances, where they are given aphrodisiacs and forced to pay homage to Pan, the god of love. On the first night that Carla visits Martha, she witnesses a woman being sacrificed to Pan, and she flees in terror. She returns later, however, after Enid reassures her that no harm is done to the women. Martha instructs Carla to put a vial of aphrodisiac in Aunt Julie's tea. That night after Aunt Julie has drunk the tea, Pan, disguised as a delivery man, brings her a poisoned rose. She touches the enchanted rose, loses control of herself, and has sex with the delivery man. Tracey is shocked to witness this, but later she is also given the aphrodisiac and reacts in the same manner as her mother. Carla, temporarily satisfied with the revenge on her relatives, asks Martha to release Aunt Julie and Tracey from the spell. Martha agrees, on the condition that Carla becomes the bride of Pan. Carla gives herself to Pan, who is actually Martha's sexually deranged brother, and though she is able to free her aunt and cousin, she falls victim in their place."

Trailer:

To be continued... one day.

The Terror (USA, 1963)

July 11, 2014, 1:32 am

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(Spoilers.) Let us meander and digress...

Aka Lady of the Shadows, The Castle of Terror, and The Haunting. Many a year ago — too many for us to want to admit to here — in our formative years we came home late from Lyles-Crouch Elementary one day and thus caught but the ending of the movie on Channel 20's Creature Feature (hosted by the great Count Gore de Vol,* who didn't write Myra Breckenridge). Not much on stars' names or faces at that age, we knew who Boris Karloff was — who didn't? — but the other faces were all unknown to us back then... but then, as we only caught the last minutes of the movie, no face other than one had a chance of making an impression on us. And the face that did, that of the pretty girl carried out of the flooding basement by the good guy, only impressed us because right after the guy kissed her, it melted away in B&W gooey messiness. (Yes, Virginia, people used to have B&W television sets.) It added, needless to say, a whole new aspect to the ickiness of kissing girls that we hadn't even yet conceived — and that we also luckily forgot when we started getting fuzz on our danglers.

Whatever. In any event, the scene did forever remain ingrained in our minds, though the title of the movie did not — but now we know, as of last night, and as many reading this may have guessed, that the ending that we caught that day belonged to the legendary Roger Corman production, The Terror. And while the face that melted is perhaps mostly unknown today (as when the movie was made), that of the heroic lad doing the kissing is not: it is none other than a young Jack Nicholson, back in the days when he was a lousy actor making good (?) movies. Hard to believe that he was ever a slim, almost handsome lad...

And while it is perhaps redundant for most for us to reiterate why the movie is legendary, we like to assume that those reading reviews such as this one know little or nothing about the film at hand, so perhaps a small historical assessment is needed. Above all, The Terror is renowned for being the apogee of Corman's ability to make a movie from nothing. In this case, in the middle of his Poe Phase, Corman had sets and time left over from The Raven (1963 / trailer) and promptly roped in many of those involved in that film, by low payment and/or promise of delayed payment, to create a film from nothing; what he didn't direct, he let others do it — including Francis Ford Coppola (the director of Dementia 13 [1963 / trailer / full movie]), Monte Hellman (director of Beast from Haunted Cave [1959 / trailer / full movie] and Silent Night, Deadly Night 3: Better Watch Out! [1989 / trailer]), Jack Hill (director of the masterpiece Spider Baby [1964 / trailer / full movie], Mondo Keyhole [1966 / opening], Coffy [1973] and Foxy Brown [1974 / trailer], among other fine films), Jack Nicholson (of The Little Shop of Horrors [1960 / trailer / full movie] and The Cry Baby Killer [1958 / trailer] and probably more) — and more or less created a movie around the legendary Karloff. The script was written and improvised along the way, and the final result a schizoid, inconsistent and almost laughable event. Almost, we say, because it is very hard not to fall asleep when watching it — indeed, the other day when we finally caught it again, after so many years, all those of the party of four watching the film admitted later to dozing off at one point or another...

We caught the Euro-version, which is different than the American version that is afloat throughout the web as a public domain film; at some point or another — one source we found says 1989 — Corman pulled in an older Dick Miller (who plays the butler) to film a wrap-around sequence to the original version, which thus appears in flashback as past events; Miller, properly older, nevertheless looks rather out of place with his permed hair, and the framing filmic bookends really make no sense, but the special effects are enjoyably tacky. Still, if you really have to see this film, stick with the original version — you can at least get that one for free. 

Full movie:

The scatter and scatter-brained plot involves some Napoleonic soldier named Andre Duvalier (Nicholson, wearing the uniform used by Marlon Brando in Désirée [1954]) who, lost, meets a mysterious woman named Helene (his pregnant, then-and-only-ever wife Sandra Knight of Thunder Road [1958 / trailer], Frankenstein's Daughter [1958 / trailer / full movie], Blood Bath  [1966 / trailer, starring William Campbell], The Haunting of Morella [1990 / trailer] and Inevitable Grace [1994 / trailer]), with whom he promptly becomes obsessed. While searching for her over the course of the film, he crosses paths with an Old Lady (Dorothy Neumann of The Undead [1957 / trailer from hell], Teenage Doll [1957 / trailer] and that masterpiece of sleaze, Private Parts [1972 / trailer]) and some guy named Gustaf  (Jonathan Haze  of  The Saga of the Viking Women and Their Voyage to the Waters of the Great Sea Serpent [1957 / trailer / full movie],   Monster from the Ocean Floor [1954 / trailer], The Day the World Ended [1955 / trailer], The Beast with a Million Eyes [1955 / trailer], It Conquered the World [1956 / trailer], Swamp Women [1956 / full movie] and Not of this Earth [1957 / trailer]) and, eventually, Baron Victor Frederick Von Leppe (Karlof) and his butler... in the end everyone but Nicholson and the Butler dies.

OK, there is a lot more to the plot, but it isn't like it really makes all that much sense or really can be followed, so there is no real reason to go into detail about it. Indeed, if one were to re-title The Terror in such a way to actually reflect the movie and its content, its title would something more along the lines of The Idiocy or The Confusion or The Mess. Nevertheless, in all honesty, when considering the genesis of The Terror— no completed starting script, narrative developed along the way, five or more directors all of whom contributed to the story —  the movie is surprising coherent, if in an incoherent way. 

True, none of us four who watched the film recently could, at the end, fully explain the role of all six characters, but then, as mentioned previously, we did all also snooze at one point or another. And though we couldn't figure out the logic of the characters and how they related to each other — particularly Gustaf to the Nasty Old Lady — we did all agree that the The Terror started, progressed (very slowly), and ended. Had we watched it before midnight instead of after, we might have even enjoyed it that special train-wreck way, but we did watch it late at night and thus we must agree with Jack Nicholson's own opinion of the film: "It was incredibly bad." (But then, so was he.)

In all truth, not everything about The Terror is bad. It is sure to scare the little ones shitless, as it does have an oddly nightmarish quality to it and more than one decent shock scene (the opening cellar scene with Karloff, the scene in which a hawk pecks Gustaf's eyes out and, of course, the final kissing scene). Also, anyone who is partial to vintage illustration is sure to find Paul Julian's background drawings to the opening credit sequence fabulous — he's the artist behind The Hangman (1964), our Short Film of the Month for February 2011. (The Euro-version of The Terror totally obliterates the original drawings, another reason not to watch it.) And while Jack Nicholson is totally miscast as a Napoleonic officer, he hadn't yet learned how to convert his natural look of lost confusion and/or sub-intelligence into mischievousness devilry; thus he does have an oddly cuddly appearance that might appeal to some out there. And the directorial schizophrenia is on occasion rather interesting: there are interludes of Bergman-like close-ups, interludes of long shots (and not just for scenes that would require them), and an occasional dolly shot so cinematically pleasant that is actually jarred with the overall incompetency of the movie. (There is also a shot of Karloff which, if we remember correctly, is re-used three times.) It is seriously obvious that different directors were at play at different times in The Terror. And lastly, even though it has obviously faded over the years and is easily less than half that which it once was, The Terror often displays that wonderfully sumptuous color scheme that Corman graced his much better Poe films with...

The Terror: a mess, hardly imperative, but fine for the rainy day at home with kids still lacking peach fuzz...

* We are forever grateful to that man for introducing us to the masterpiece that is The Night of the Living Dead (1968 / trailer / full movie), which he broadcast uncut for the first time ever in the US in 1975 — we know that it was 1975, by the way, 'cause TV spots for the just-released Candy Tangerine Man were broadcast during the commercial breaks.

The TV spot to The Candy Tangerine Man:

Mountain of the Cannibal God (Italy, 1978)

July 18, 2014, 12:59 am

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Italian title: La montagna del dio cannibal. Sergio Martino, "Italy's Unsung Exploitation King"— aka Julian Barry, Martin Dolman, Serge Martin, Christian Plummer and George Raminto — jumped onto the popular Italian cannibal film bandwagon relatively quickly; this movie here was probably the fourth or fifth one to follow the film that set the template and started the ball rolling, Umberto Lenzi's Man from Deep River (1972 / trailer). Regrettably, Mountain of the Cannibal God is neither one of Martino's best efforts nor a particularly noteworthy movie, cannibal or otherwise, and while it might be "mildly diverting"— as one of our pals described the movie after watching it with us — it is hardly imperative viewing, or in any way truly memorable.

The fault here lies not in Martino's direction, which is effective enough, and not in the dubbing, which is of typical Italo quality, but rather in the entire story, the characters, and the absolutely miscast Ursula Andress, who, at least as long as she is dressed, literally flounders through this movie looking like a lost witch. Nude or in rags, she looks like one hot 42-year-old, the age she was when she made the film, but whenever she appears dressed — which is for most of the movie — her atrocious frizzy hair, never-ending forehead, charcoal-rimmed eyes and total lack of eyebrows makes her an unnerving sight to see, if not simply extremely unappealing. This is less apparent in the opening scenes, during which she wears such obnoxious necklaces that the viewers look at them instead of her, but once those tasteless (and probably expensive) baubles disappear, one can no longer avoid noticing that Andress looks, well, as if either the 16 years since Dr. No (1962 / trailer) had not been kind to her or the on-set makeup artist hadn't liked her.

Ursula Andress plays Susan Stevenson, who arrives on New Guinea in search of her missing husband Henry. She and her slimy brother Arthur (Antonio Marsina of Keoma [1976 / trailer]) end up hiring Prof. Edward Foster (Stacy Keach of The Class of 1999 [1990 / trailer], The Hollow [2004 / trailer] and Ooga Booga [2013 / trailer]), a colleague of Henry, who is convinced that Henry probably went to the mountain of Ra Ra Me — the Mountain of the Cannibal God — and before you can say "You all gonna die" they undertake an illegal expedition to the island where, as to be expected, their native guides get killed one by one and the whities all reveal themselves as dislikable egoists with hidden agendas.

Somewhere along the way, probably because Keach's contract ran out, they hook up with the adventurer Manolo (Claudio Cassinelli [13 September 1938 — 13 July 1985*] of Fulci's Murderock [1984 / German trailer], Flavia: Heretic Priestess [1974 / trailer], and Martino's Scorpion with Two Tails [1982 / trailer], Something Waits in the Dark [1979 / Italo trailer] and Big Alligator River [1979 / German trailer]), the only one amongst them with morals, written into the story to enable a romantic subplot and a new heroic lead once Foster reveals himself to be a revenge-crazed nutcase: his hidden agenda (SPOILER) is that he wants to wipe out the entire cannibal tribe because they made him eat human flesh years earlier when he was forcefully integrated into the tribe. Really: he basically wants to exterminate an entire tribe to fix his head cold, and when he finally reveals it to a fellow character, it is met with understanding, as if genocide as an act of redemption is perfectly understandable and acceptable. Hello?

Mountain of the Cannibal God has the requisite number of shock scenes, the saving grace of the movie, even if they are once too often achieved by gratuitous real-life animal violence that does nothing to advance the plot and thus comes across as forced and mercantile. (Martino once claimed that the producers forced him to add the animal slaughtering after the fact, but it is too well integrated into the film to look added to the film as an afterthought; if it was added at all, it was probably added to the shooting script.)

The long trudge through the jungle is extremely dull, with one too many scenes of people running this way and that — amazing how no matter what happens in the entire movie, Andress' butt-ugly make-up remains perfect — and the entire bit in the village where they meet up with Manolo comes across as padding, though it is made a bit more bearable by the chocolate breasts of the village's singular beauty. The big twist revelation at the mountain in regard to one character, we must admit, was unexpected, but for that the last-minute scene of redemption is extremely hollow and unconvincing, obviously tacked on just so that the viewer can like the final survivors once again. As for the cannibal natives, well, let's just say that their traditional tribal garb seems to be white body paint and dirty, bad-sitting wigs, and despite the atrocity of their primitive acts they come across more laughable than frightening.

Mountain of the Cannibal God has some nice scenery but little suspense or tension, even when the scenes are obviously intended to have some. Most of the "money shots"— the animal killings, the emasculation, Andress being prepared to become the goddess, the sex scene in the village — fail to integrate fully or coalesce into the movie and come across as if they were decided upon due to some checklist of standard cannibal movie elements that the scriptwriters (Martino and Cesare Frugoni) were working though systematically. The gross-out factor is high, and the gore convincing, perhaps the only aspect of the movie in any way entertaining, but on the whole the movie garners more giggles and groans than it does involve or affect, and as a result it is almost instantly forgettable.

Still, it is hard to completely hate a movie that has a totally gratuitous cannibal dwarf, regardless of how quickly he is done away with. Mountain of the Cannibal God— mildly diverting, but unmemorable.

* Cassinelli made six films with Sergio Martino and probably would have made more had he, while filming Martino's Fists of Steel (1985 / Italo trailer), not died in an on-set helicopter crash.

 

R.I.P.: Harry H. Novak, Part V: 1968

July 25, 2014, 9:33 am

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12 January  1928 — 26 March  2014

"When I was a kid, my Daddy told me, 'There's a buyer for everything.' And I lived to find out that he was right."

Harry H. Novak

Harry H. Novak, alongside David F Friedman(24 December 1923 — 14 February 2011) one of the great (s)exploitation kings of the last half of the 20th century, died 26 March 2014 at the age of 86.

A detailed career review of all the projects Harry H. Novak foisted upon the American public would be Sisyphean task at best and hardly possible, as no full and unequivocal list exists. What follows is a review of the films that we found that, for the most part, probably had Novak's involved somewhere along the way — and some that may not have. It is definitely not a complete list, and definitely not infallible, it is merely culled from sources reliable and unreliable that we found online. We also in no way suggest that the given release dates are the correct ones, they are merely the first ones we found.

If you know any we missed, feel free to send the title...

Go here for Part II (1956–64)

Go here for Part III (1965–1966)

Go here for Part IV (1967)

Boneless

(1968, dir. Seiichi Fukuda)

Aka Mutilation, original title: Honenuki. Another Japanese pink film picked up by Harry Novak for stateside release. EigaWijiasays: "Given the title Mutilation in some English texts, the film was released in the US by Harry Novak under the title Boneless. Under that title it has been released in the US on DVD-R by Something Weird video, who describe it as 'a lurid offering from the formative years of the Japanese eroduction'.

Over at imdb, c.auger@gmx.de explains the plot: "When the two lovers Yukio (Kaoru Miya) and Minoru (Mari Nagisa) meet again after four years of separation, they find that their old feelings are not dead. The problem is that Yukio is now married. But things get really complicated when they are spied upon by a blackmailer who then forces Yukio to have sex with Mister Jacob, a foreign businessman. Ironically, it was Yukio's unknowing husband, who ordered the blackmailer to find a woman for his important business partner Jacob. When Jacob leaves the country the blackmailer decides to use Yukio for other jobs and make her his partner."

Japanese poster above from Las Mejores Peliculas delMundo. 

For Single Swingers Only

(1968, dir. Don Davis)

Included by benefit of doubt, this Don Davis (aka Donald A. Davis) movie should not to be confused with Columbia Pictures'For Singles Only, released the same year (poster below). For Single Swingers Only was later released on VHS by Something Weird as a Harry Novak double feature with Gordon Heller's Free Love Confidential (1967).

RottenTomatoesreduces the plot to "the party really gets started when single girls Gracie (Heidi Anderson) and Gloria (Sharon Sanford) move into a swingers-only apartment complex", but Amazon offers more detail: "Gracie and Gloria move into an apartment complex reserved For Single Swingers Only where the bed-hoppin' neighbors include studs-in-residence Arty and Dave, 'everybody's playmate' Connie, and Ruth, the lesbian landlady who's also 'a peek freak.' But not everyone was made to swing and Gracie starts to crack, especially after finding Arty & Dave making it with a teen runaway in the living room and Gloria & Ruth doing it in the bedroom: 'Everything has an insane dirty feeling about it!' So insane that poor Gracie starts to imagine all the swingers turning into refugees from a horror film. Sexploitation as you like it from the vaults of Harry Novak. Remember: 'Only Groovy Chicks Need Apply'!"

Scenes from Columbia Pictures'For Singles Only: 

Sounds like a plot to us, but DVD Drive-indisagrees: "Unlike Don Davis' other films, For Single Swingers Only has a threadbare plot on which to hang non-stop nude and sex scenes. This is the epitome of the weekend wonder, obviously shot for pennies in a local motel posing as an apartment complex. You get two long shower scenes, lots of extended scenes of people unpacking, walking around their apartments, or sitting around naked, somehow ballooning the running time of this thing to 68 minutes. It fits well on this double feature, considering we follow two more young women having sexual shenanigans in the free love 1960s, but unfortunately has little to recommend about it."

As far as we can tell, no one in front of the camera ever made another movie — or at least not under the same name. For Single Swingers Only can be found for free on any number of NSFW websites, like this one here.

Four Kinds of Love

(1968, writ. & dir. William Rotsler)
 

"Yes, there are Four Kinds of Love . . . four kinds of sex. There is an infinite number of combinations. If you can avoid Hate and Money-sex, find enough Like-sex and search for Love-sex, you just might get through life alive." 

The Press Book at One-Sheet Index.

Years before Ellen S. Berscheid came up with her specifications of the four kinds of love (Romantic/Passionate Love, Companionate Love, Compassionate Love, and Attachment Love), Rotsler reduced love to sex and proposed and presented his own definitions of the four kinds of love in this movie here, aptly entitled Four Kinds of Love, which the American Film Institute's Catalog of Motion Pictures Produced in the United States (Volume 1, Part 2) explains as: "An investigation into human sexual behavior reveals four different modes of erotic involvement: sex between lovers, called 'love-sex'; 'money-sex' including all relationships motivated by the desire for material gain; casual or 'like-sex'; and 'hate-sex', which includes rape."

We took a superficial look at this "drama" in our R.I.P. career review of Paul Hunt: "According to imdb, Paul Hunt appears uncredited as 'Paul' in this sex film directed by Renaissance Man William Rotsler. At imdb, john22900says: 'There's not much to this movie. The women in this movie are much better to look at than the men. For the most part the women have nice bodies and pretty faces. Two of the men that are almost instantly recognizable are Jay Edwards and William Rotsler aka Shannon Carse. The best looking brunette is probably Carol Turner who is very hot but there is a blonde with a nice set of large breasts too. This film is in black and white and most of the film is spent on nudity and sex. No plot to speak of. The film is better when it concentrates on the naked women, not the men who thankfully keep most of their clothes on during this movie'."

The press book at One-Sheet Indexexplains the fine points of the four segments: "The Love-sex portion of Four Kinds of Love features Kathleen Williams and Don Alman in what, in effect, is an erotic poem. [...] Money-sex is the world's oldest commodity. A lot of marriages are built on Money-sex. Money-sex isn't just prostitution (as shown in the film by Jay Edwards purchase and use of Carol Turner) or street corner assignation or the money on the dresser. It's the girl who allows you certain freedoms because if she doesn't, you won't take her to dinner or the movies and she won't be popular. It's the wife who married for the large house, the safe husband, the sure job, the bank account and the duplicate credit cards. [...] Hate-sex comes in many guises jealousy, frustration, fear. [...] Sheri Jackson is annoyed at Hugh Hamilton's eager pawing and decides to build him up to a big let-down . . . only she falls victim to her own trap and is raped. [...] Like-sex is most of the sex in the world. Ordinarily people must at least like each other to participate. Like-sex is the sex part of most marriages, and all casual affairs. [...] And no one likes sex better than Clint Randall, James Brand and Paul Hunter who pursue and are pursued by an eager band of lovelies — Karen Richards, Brigette Grennell, Linda Stiles, Sheri Jackson, Vicky Saunders and Christine Thomas."

Among the other women of the film is brunette Kathy Williams, above, who showed up that same year in a secondary role in Don Henderson's great morality tale, The Babysitter (trailer).

Theme Song to The Babysitter:

Behind Locked Doors

(1968, writ. & dir. Charles Romine)

Not to be confused — as many people do — with Distribpix's B&W roughie Two Girls for a Madman, also from 1968, directed by Stanley H. Brassloff, whom some online sources credit as co-scriptwriter to Behind Locked Doors.

Trailer to Two Girls for a Madman:

Aka Any Body... Any Way, Le amanti proibite del Dr. Sex, and Sto gymno kormi sou, Behind Closed Doors appears to be Charles Romine's only known film; more than one source indicates that it was released in the 70s with hardcore inserts under the title Then Came Ecstasy, while other sources say the movie originally came from South Africa (we assume the country, not the region) and was bought and distributed by Novak. The tidbit about South Africa, which is hardly likely if Stanley H. Brassloff truly did script the film, is strongly negated by DVD Drive-in, which states "Contrary to popular belief, Behind Locked Doors was not made in South Africa. Director Charles Romine hailed from the Cape, but the film was shot in upstate New York, which would explain the appearance of Shriek of the Mutilated's (trailer) Ivan Hagar as the creepy handyman (as in that film, he spends much of the time shirtless and in awe of his own hairy muscular body) and familiar library music from Findlay and Wishman flicks."

At DB Cult, Phil Hardyoffers the following originally not 100% correct but now corrected synopsis: "After their car is drained of petrol, two young girls (Eve Reeves and Joyce Danner) stay the night at the mysterious hilltop mansion of a Mr. Bradley (Daniel Garth) and his sister Myra. They soon discover they are prisoners, and are to be used as subjects in Bradley's scientific experiments to find a perfect love mate. A mixture of old-dark-house horrors and sexual goings-on, the film is effectively suspenseful and climaxes in a Corman-esque conflagration further enlivened by the appearance of the re-animated corpses of Bradley's previous victims."

Trailer to Behind Locked Doors:

 The Muthers

(1968, dir. Donald A. Davis)
 

Novak distributes yet another movie directed by the Ed Wood wanna-be Donald A. Davis, this time written by "Jason Hunter", who wrote a total of four Davis films — including Marsha: The Erotic Housewife (1970 / trailer) — and then disappeared.

The Muthers is not to be confused — although it always is — with the Blaxploitation movie from 1976, also titled The Muthers (see above): the cast in the 1968 Davis movie here is lily white and privileged.

 

Marsha Jordan, seen above in full glory, the lead wanton woman of The Muthers (and Marsha: The Erotic Housewife, for that matter) was a highly active actress in the sleaze cinema of the 60s and 70s, only quitting with the rise of raw wiener and tuna and detailed salami sandwiches. Her most famous film is probably Count Yorga, Vampire (1970) in which, unlike The Muthers and Marsha: The Erotic Housewife, she does not play the lead.

Trailer to Count Yorga, Vampire (1970):

TCMhas the plot: "A group of thrill-seeking, Southern California suburban women ignore the effects of their extramarital sexual activities on their children until Susie (Kathy Williams), teenage daughter of one of the women (Marsha Jordan), mortally wounds her boyfriend when she finds him in bed with her mother."

The other "suburban lounge lizardess" of note in The Muthers is Virginia Gordon, seen above, Playboy magazine's Playmate of the Month for January 1959. "Gordon's most significant film, in terms of cinema history, is 1962's Tonight for Sure, as it marks the directorial debut of Francis Ford Coppola." But her most shocking film is surely Lee Frost's 1968 disturbingly sleazy The Animal.

Full Movie — The Animal (1968):

Kitten in a Cage

(1968, dir. Richard MacLeod)

No Kitten with a Whip (1964) here, just a Kitten in the Cage. Novak did the theatrical distribution of this movie; ten years later director Richard MacLeod did the porn movie The Ganja Express (with Jamie Gillis & Annie Sprinkle [a still NSFW edit of the movie]) and then disappeared. Going by the trailer below, Kitten in a Cage was post-synced with all the finesse of an Italian slasher.

Trailer to Kitten in a Cage:

Over at Fandango, Mark Deming of Rovi offers the plot: "A woman is caught in the middle of a plot by thieves to steal a fortune she doesn't really know about in this oddball sexploitation opus filled with strange plot twists, non sequitur dialogue, characters who appear only to be dropped moments later, and clumsy post-production audio recording. Regular guy Ted (John Durnham) is driving down the highway when he's flagged down by Julie (Miriam Eliot), a panicky woman wearing only a raincoat who has just escaped from a mental institution with cops on her trail. According to Julie, she was locked up against her will for reasons she doesn't understand, and needs to get back to the city. Ted is puzzled but offers to help, and eventually Julie makes contact with her boss, Brian, who owns several nightspots in town. Brian offers to let Julie stay with him, and when Ted informs Julie that her apartment has been ransacked, she takes Brian up on his offer. However, after a man in a ski mask attempts to attack Julie with a syringe, Brian arranges for Julie to stay with Kelly (June Roberts), an exotic dancer who works at one of his clubs. As it happens, Kelly would like Julie to be more than just a houseguest, but that's the least of Julie's troubles; a gang of criminals have discovered a fortune in jewels has been stashed in one of Brian's bars where Julie once worked, and they need her help to find them, even if she's unaware of their presence."

Video Vacuumwas not impresses with Kitten: "Man, this is one muddled and under-plotted skinflick [...]. The biggest problem with Kitten in a Cage is that the audience never really knows what the fuck is going on throughout the entire movie. Sometimes this is a good thing, like if Christopher Nolan or David Lynch is directing the flick, because at the end there's some sort of payoff. Since this flick was directed by the no-name never-was Robert MacLeod, none of this remotely works. At one point Julie says, 'There are so many loose ends'. That pretty much sums everything up. [...] The plot is paper thin (although that's really an insult to paper) and the painful running time is padded with decidedly unsexy footage of horse-faced strippers. Combine that with the molasses pacing, terrible acting, non-existent production values, and horribly looped dialogue and sound effects; and you've got yourself one truly shitty flick. I did like the lesbian massage scene though."
Kitten in a Cage was the last film for glamour model and second-string sleaze starlet June Roberts; credited here as "June Morgan", she plays Kelly. Roberts probably began her "film career"  (if one can call it that) the Brazilian "melodramas" (if one can call them that)Otto Lara Rezende ou... Bonitinha, Mas Ordinária aka Pretty But Wicked (1963 / full Brazilian version) and Acosada aka The Pink Pussy: Where Violence Lives (1964), went on to work for such fine filmmakers as the Findleys, Joseph P. Mawra, Barry Mahon, Joseph Sarno, C. Davis Smith, Sande N. Johnsen and Doris Wishman before, well, disappearing into obscurity. As the website Mr Skin says, "June Roberts is one of the original pioneers of perversion on the big screen, and for that we owe her an eternal debt of gratitude [....]".

Trailer to The Pink Pussy — Where Violence Lives (1964):

  

The Devil in Velvet

(1968, dir. Larry Crane)

Novak distributed this movie not based on the classic John Dickson Carr novel of the same name.
The American Film Institute Catalog of Motion Pictures (Volume 1, Part 1), which calls the movie a comedy, explains the plot: "The Marquis de Sade is brought to trial before Chancellor Marboeuf (Edmund Nightwood) on charges of poisoning three prostitutes after a bawdy-house orgy. As the witnesses file past, the Marquis' strange and imaginative sexual practices are revealed, along with his outrageous sense of humor. After the orgy in question, each girl was presented with a box of candies, which the plaintiffs claim were poisoned. The testimony reveals that the candies actually contained a laxative. It becomes evident that the Marquis' gross sensualism is devoid of malice, and the Chancellor becomes convinced that the charges against him are an insult to the nobility of France. Before sentence is passed, however, the Marquis is permitted to speak. The contempt he expresses for the entire court enrages the judge, who sentences him to life imprisonment in the Bastille. Having spent 13 years in confinement, the Marquis makes imprudent remarks about the prison governor, and he is transferred to the Asylum for the Insane at Charenton 11 days before the Revolution would have freed him. Regretfully, he contemplates his former life."

Among the babes in the film: Christine Cybelle (seen above from Fly Now Pay Later [1969]), also found in Cool It, Baby (1967), which we took a look at in Part IV of this RIP career review. Scriptwriter "Walter M. Berger" wrote five films for Larry Crane and then dropped off the face of the earth. The last script he supplied was for Crane's 1969 B&D opus, All Women Are Bad.

Trailer to All Women Are Bad (1969):

Mantis in Lace

(1968, dir. William Rotsler)
  

Aka Lila. Written by Sanford White — not the long-murdered architect Stanford White — whose meager (known) film career includes the film script to Free Love Confidential(1967) and, supposedly, a directorial turn with The Art of Gentle Persuasion (1970), the theme song of which, Sexy World— if we are to believe The American Film Institute Catalog of Motion Pictures (Volume 1, Part 1) — is sung by "Tushi Grabasso".

Eccentric Cinema, which doesn't like the movie, says "This is a truly bizarre movie that was originally released in two different forms: one a psychedelic serial killer film with sex, the other a psychedelic sex film with a serial killer. Take your pick; either way it's a very strange trip. Both versions have one thing in common, though: lots of tits and little sense."

Over at Mondo Digital, Harry Novak himself explains which is which: "That [film] was a horror mystery, a thriller, with a little T&A in it, and it had psychedelic lighting which was quite the thing at the time. For the drive-ins and the conventional theaters, Mantis in Lace was the horror title, and Lila was the sex exploitation version. There was very little difference, maybe ten minutes at the most. It did exceptionally well for the period."

Mantis in Lace Theme Song:

Here at A Wasted Life, we took a superficial look at the movie Lila during our R.I.P. career review of surfing sleazemonger Paul Hunt: "Better known in (its edited form) as Mantis in Lace. According to imdb, Paul appears uncredited as a member of the audience — a slim connection at best for including the film here, but it is Rotsler's masterpiece and does have a great title song. Plot, per imdb: 'A topless dancer attracts, seduces, then murders the men she sleeps with. She does it with a twist, however; she kills them with garden tools.' As Girls, Guns and Ghouls puts it: 'If you're looking for a nice, humble sleaze-film that relishes its vintage strip-club environs, go no further than Mantis in Lace. It doesn't drench the screen with gore or even that much sex, but there's something quite effective about the whole demented little endeavor.'"

The on-line magazine called Funhouseoffers further info: "The story is very basic: go-go dancer (Susan Stewert as Lila) picks up goon, brings goon home, takes acid, and stabs goon while having simultaneous sex and bad trip (she never has a good trip, but keeps dropping the dope). [...] Good scenes are of the Sunset Strip were we see The Youngbloods, Things To Come, and Procol Harum on the Whiskey A Go-Go marquee, Gazzari's, and a sign advertising an 'LSD Review'. Also all of Lila's strange trips. In one she cuts into a sandwich, which changes to a knife cutting through a bloody arm. Referring to this scene Rotsler notes, 'The lab lost a vital 400-foot roll and Peter Perry (of Kiss Me Quick [1964]) did a magnificent job of editing without anything to edit. [...] A man in the Washington, DC area who had a number of theatres — he wanted more blood. So we rented the same stage and used my grandfather's meat-axe, and every time she ['Lila'] chopped down two fat guys threw paper cups full of blood on her.' [...] While the bodies continue to disappear the bumbling cops begin to investigate. This allows us to follow them into various topless bars and sunset strip type psychedelic go go clubs, which gives us the opportunity to watch a number of other topless dancers. Among those featured is Pat Barrington [...].

NSFW (Yes, They Are Plastic) —

Pat Barrington's Belly Dance from All The Way Down (1968):

"That's about it, but the general shallowness of the development of the plot is more than made up for by the crazy combination of topless go go dancing, acid tripping, and bloody murder. The movie is still however more of a nudie flick than a gore flick, with an ample showing of female breasts, and the displayed violence being actually minimal. With the budget he had to work with, Rotsler turned out a film a step above others of its type in quality."

Trailer to Mantis in Lace:

Naked Pursuit

(1968, dir. Toshio Okuwaki)
 
Trailer:

Original title: Kôfun!!. Director Okuwaki was once married to Tamaki Katori, the now-retired actress who, with roughly 600 film credits to her name and extremely active in the early days of Pink, once was known as the Pink Princess of Japan. According to Jasper Sharp's book Behind the Pink Curtain: The Complete History of Japanese Sex Cinema, the original Japanese version of this film here is now lost, while Novak's is still around.

BFI, concise as always, explains the film thus: "A young girl planning suicide is raped by a student (Masayoshi Nogami [2 March 1940 — 22 December 2010]). The sensual pleasure she experiences for the first time restores her will to live." In other words, another film that propagates that misogynist fantasy that women enjoy being raped. (Remeber: "No" means "Yes"— Not!)

The rapist — or rather, the actor playing the rapist, Masayoshi Nogami — enjoyed a long career; zombie fans might want to check out a 2001 film in which he appears, Stacy.

Trailer to Stacy:

Suburban Pagans

(1968, writ. & dir. "Shannon Carse")
 
"Oh, and don't wear too much underwear":

"Shannon Carse", of course, was one of William Rotsler's favorite pseudonyms. Released in Germany as Wilde Nächte im Pornoclub — "Wild Nights in the Porno Club".

In regard to this faux documentary full of ugly men who luckily remain for the most part fully clothed, the on-line magazine Funhousesays, "The operative word with this kinky is CHEAP. It is one of the emptiest in story and shoddiest in production value of any films of this sort that I have yet experienced. We start with a TV reporter (James Brad), with the seemingly obligatory fake mustache, interviewing Lt. Art Grennell (Steve Vincent) about the latest case he's wrapped, an evil group of San Fernando Valley swingers. [...] We are never really informed about just why it is illegal for a group of consenting married adults to get together and trade spouses, but the Lt. does give us a bit of his moralizing as to the cause. [...] When he states that, 'Man being then kind of animal he is, there are undoubtedly other clubs like this functioning at this moment', we cut to the action. After a sweep of the city, we see a group picking each other's house keys from a wastebasket to determine the current pairings. The featured actresses are Cara Peters, Kathleen Williams, Christine Thomas, and Carole Sanders. The rest of the plot is mostly taken up with the featured couples going through a variety of the swinger motions. [...] This film does show more female nudity, and does so for more extended periods of time, than many others. It also at least partially depicts activities such as group sex and lesbianism. [...] This film qualifies as a three-sleazer mostly by the fact that it's so shoddy. The direction is horrible, there's no continuity, the overdubbing is atrocious, and the dialog and story line are comical. Along with the relatively greater explicitness of the sexual situations, this ultra cheapness knocks it up a sleaze level. [...]."

 

Another Suburban Pagans Clip:

Acapulco Uncensored

(1968, dir. Donald A. Davis [uncredited])

Aka Mucho Macho Acapulco, Acapulco Expose, Acapulco Sex. Personally, we here at A Wasted Life have our doubts that Harry H. Novak had anything to do with this movie, as there is only one source, an on-line magazine called Funhouse, that claims he distributed it.

My Duck Is Deadexplains the basic concept of this faux documentary: "Hidden cameras reveal the seamier side of one of the world's wildest cities. For the first time, see Acapulco uncovered, where young women perform all sorts of incredibly perverse acts in the secret houses of pleasure."

At imdb, good ol'lorfrom New York City actually saw the movie and wrote about it: "[...] Acapulco Uncensored offers little to the soft porn fan. It was clearly filler when released in the '60s and has even less interest today. A phony sailor (familiar actor Victor Izay [23 December 1923—20 January 2014]) is on-screen narrator, introducing mainly staged sex scenes using familiar porn talent. Usual hidden-camera premise to watch real people is bogus, though some unattractive non-pros are included in the cast. Condescending narration tries to contrast Mexican slums with high-society folk getting down to do the nasty (softcore style). A wife-swapping session by a pool features full frontal nudity, but looks like a sequence lifted from some feature film. Local prostitution is presented unglamorously and in boring fashion. At one point two hookers demonstrate lesbian sex — unarousing and patently phony. Kathy Williams displays her torpedo-shaped breasts as an American tourist named Marsha, seduced by a water ski boat owner Ramon (Vic Lance). This acted out scene is supposedly 'reality'. A nightlife segment features a busty young novice in a brothel but we don't even get to see her topless. Film concludes with an idiotic sequence on the narrator's boat with buxom redhead Linda O'Bryant camping it up as a dominating lesbian whore, who gives both our hero and his deckhand Mario a hard time. [...] It's the worst feature credited to usually reliable Don Davis I've sat through so far, by far. 

Victor Izay also appeared in Ted V. Mikels'Blood Orgy of the She-Devils (1972):

The Love Clinic

(1968, dir. Ferd Sebastian)

A popular title for vintage sleaze publications, none of which were the basis of this movie, which is an early film from the sleaze producing duo of husband Ferd Sebastian (director) and wife Beverly Sebastian (producer) — with regular collaborator (pseudonym?) Ann Cawthorne (scriptwriter) — whom we took a cursory look at in our R.I.P. career review of cult actor Richard Lynchwhen we took a look at the Sebastian & Sebastian flick Delta Fox (1979). As Emovieposter, whence we took the image below, states: "Ferd Sebastian, [...] directed several exploitation movies and then, after suffering from health issues, became a born-again Christian!"

Yet again, we here at A Wasted Life have our doubts about to what extent Harry H. Novak had anything to do with this movie, but not only does the on-line magazine Funhousebelieves Novak had his fingers in the pie, but TCMalso lists Boxoffice International as the movie's distributor, so we'll include it here.

In the book The Celluloid Couch, Leslie Y. Rabkin explains the plot: "This naughty-naughty of the late sixties involves a 'love clinic' presided over by a sexologist computer, COM 9001. A mix of voyeurism, masturbation, impotence, and swinging, it ends with the Luddite-inspired destruction of the machine, and a lustful 'marriage rape', which makes everything better." As the poster claims, the movie introduces two new actors, Marion Cline as the wife Kate Morgan and Jim Carlton as husband Sam, but the introduction seems to have gone nowhere for neither ever made another movie

Trailer to Ferd & Beverly Sebastian's masterpiece, 

Gator Bait (1974): 

To be continued... one day.

Short Film: The Gunfighter (USA, 2014)

July 31, 2014, 4:27 am

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What if the omnipresent voice of the cheap Western novel could suddenly to be heard by all those who are involved in the tale, and what if that voice was of a perfidious nature and knew everyone's sexual secrets? This concept is the basis of director Eric Kissack's little film here, the very professional-looking, nine-minute short film entitled The Gunfighter, written by Kevin Tenglin. 

The Gunfighter just won the award for Best Short Film at the 2014 Los Angeles Film Festival and is currently making the rounds at other festivals, where it is rightly enjoying a good reception and should surely bring in a few more honors.Some guy named S. James Wegg reviewed the short for the 20th Annual Palm Springs International ShortFest earlier this month, and, under the heading "The danger of thoughts being heard aloud", he gave the film five stars and wrote: "The old expression 'if you could read my mind' takes on a new and hilarious meaning in Kissack's satire of life in the Old West. Starting with the arrival of a stranger packing iron (Shawn Parsons [of The Sacrament (2013 / trailer)]) is ideally cast as the gradually conflicted gunfighter) in a dusty saloon, the narrator (superb texture and tone from Nick Offerman [of  Sin City (2005 / trailer) and Cursed (2005 / trailer)]) quickly slips his usual noose of dryly revealing back-story and begins revealing damning secrets about everyone from the town whore (Eileen O’Connell [of Get Dead (2014 / trailer) and Heterosexuals (2010 / trailer)]) to all of her Johns and even a 'Jane' or two who dare not speak her name. Of course the notion of a 'ballet of death' artfully has its payoff, leaving everyone seeing red and the audience praying that no all-seeing narrator will lay bare their foibles, transgressions and predilections for all to see. But relax, in these days of social media mania, how could that ever happen?"
Enjoy A Wasted Life's "Short Film of the Month" for July 2014: The Gunfighter.

The Monster Club (Great Britain, 1980)

August 10, 2014, 3:43 am

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This portmanteau film — that's golden-snot vocabulary for anthology film — is the final feature film directorial effort by Roy Ward Baker (Dr. Jekyll & Sister Hyde [1971] and The Legend of Seven Golden Vampires [1974]) and, contrary to what many people believe, is not an Amicus Productions. The vignettes are based on the tales of the British horror author R. Chetwynd-Hayes — as is the final Amicus anthology movie, From Beyond the Grave (1973 / trailer) — and John Carradine, the headlining star alongside Vincent Price, plays the author in, clearly, a fictionalized form.

An enjoyable if less than stellar effort, The Monster Club is a highly uneven ride that is at times entertaining and at times excruciating, almost never truly scary but often good for a laugh — as it was obviously intended to be — and enjoyable above all simply for the presence of the two headlining Old Masters, Carradine and Price, during the interlocking scenes. Neither seems to be trying to hard, but then they don't have too: they exude a relaxed and lightly wry presence achieved by years of experience and practice, and are a pleasure to watch and hear. They seem to be having fun, and it carries over to the viewer. 

Elsewhere, during the horror vignettes themselves, other favorite faces show up occasionally for the ride as well; Elke Sommers (Hotel der toten Gäste [1965] and Flashback – Mörderische Sommer [2000]), Donald Pleasance, Patrick Magee (Dementia 13 [1963 / trailer / full movie] and The Masque of the Red Death [1964]), and Stuart Whitman being the immediately recognizable ones for us here at A Wasted Life. This in turn also helps make the somewhat mundane and less than spectacular tales more palatable. Indeed, if the vignettes are examples of the horror that R. Chetwynd-Hayes wrote, the movie hardly inspires one to search out his work. Still, there are worse stories (and movies) out there... 

The wrap-around sequence concerns the elderly horror author Chetwynd-Hayes (John Carradine) who is out and about one night enjoying the sight of his books in a bookstore window when Eramus (Vincent Price), a starving vampire fan, takes a lite lunch from him and then invites Chetwynd-Hayes to the titular Monster Club as a form of repayment and possible inspiration. (The idea of such clubs was used again later, of course, in both the TV series Buffy (1997-2003) and its spinoff Angel (1999-2004), not to mention the monster of all monster-club movies, From Dusk to Dawn [1996 / trailer].) The place is hilarious, intentionally of course, as the whole movie does not really try hard to be serious at all, but one must say that the monster masks look less burlesque or humorous than simply badly made and dirt cheap. But the dilettantish execution of the masks reflects the general mood of the film, as The Monster Club, which doesn't really have a nasty bone in its body, is definitely aimed more at pre-teens with an odd sense of humor than anything else.

Eramus sits down to his glass of blood, Chetwynd-Hayes to his tomato juice (so as to look less conspicuous), and we are treated to a rather long lecture on the family tree of monster interbreeding, the concept that is common to all three stories, which feature characters of different mixed blood. The first tale, "The Shadmock", is perhaps the ickiest one of them all, if only because it is so sad that a beauty like Angela (Barbara Kellerman of Satan's Slave [1976 / trailer]) meets the fate that she does, while her slimebag boyfriend (Simon Ward of Deadly Strangers [1975 / full movie], Dominique [1979 / trailer], Holocaust 2000 [1977 / a trailer] and Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed! [1969 / trailer]) only ends up insane. The "monster" of the segment, the "shadmock" Raven (James Laurenson of Assault [1971 / trailer]), looking much like a first cousin of the Addams Family, is more tragic than terrible, and in the longer run is perhaps in greater need of a good shrink than a girlfriend. (Some websites claim that Klaus KIinsky had been offered and turned down a role in The Monster Club; it is easy to imagine that this may have been the part.) 

The middle section, "The Vampires", introduced by an chuckle-inducing swipe at film producers, is perhaps the weakest if funniest of them all, and features both Donald Pleasance (Raw Meat [1972], Prince of Darkness [1987], The Mutations [1973]  and Django II  [1987]) as a vampire hunter, Eklund as a human vampire bride, and Richard Johnson (of Zombies II [1979 / trailer], The Haunting [1963 / trailer], Beyond the Door [1974 / trailer], The Comeback [1978 / trailer], The Great Alligator [1979 / German trailer], The Night Child [1975 / trailer] and much more) as the absentee vampire father; the first twist at the end is rather effective and funny, the second twist only gives the viewer the feeling that the filmmakers wanted their cake and to eat it, too. In other words, it is less funny than simply too much and actually damages an already too-humorous segment... Still, kids who like happy ending will like it. 

And then comes the final tale, "The Ghouls", featuring Patrick Magee as one of the bad ghouls and Stuart Whitman (of Eaten Alive [1977 / trailer], Night of the Lepus [1972 / trailer], Ruby [1977 / trailer], Devil's Hand [1981 / trailer], Horror Safari  [1982 / trailer], Welcome to Arrow Beach [1974 / trailer] and Deadly Intruder      [1988 / trailer]) as the director in search of a shooting location. If one overlooks the one blaring flaw of the story — the ghouls can't stand the cross yet have for years taken dinner from a graveyard full of cross tombstones*— it is perhaps the most successful of the lot: blackly humorous and extremely fatalistic, it is horrendous even as it tries not to be overly serious. It comes the closest, in our opinion, to the tales found in the classic EC comic books, which were, as everyone knows, the biggest influence on the British (if not most) anthology horror film as of the 1960s and 70s.

Two other highpoints of the movie include Price's closing monologue, a convincing argument that humans are far more the true monster on the world than all other monsters combined, and a funny striptease (done by an unknown Suzanna Willis) to some group called Night that we have often seen as a GIF but had never previously known whence it came. It gets a good laugh from those who don't know it — and almost as good of one from those who do. It is also the only music interlude that doesn't make the viewer cringe...

Stevie (Vann) Lange  of Night sings — The Stripper Scene:

Speaking of the music interludes: they are biggest flaw of the movie, and The Monster Club would well have been better served had they been dumped in favor of a forth episode. But they are there, and they are not good, almost as bad as those found in Night Train to Terror (1985), but instead of only one crappy new wave group (as in the legendary Night Train), in The Monster Club there are four or maybe more — we've tried desperately to forget — and they are not all new wave, old wave or of any wave at all.The oldest wave is of course The Pretty Things, who show up for a song and thus only reveal how deep of a commercial rut they were already in when the movie came out. The best number is of course that of the token female singer Stevie Lange, but as killer as her voice is, like all the songs in the movie, it's not like you will find yourself really wanting to hear it again. 

But good or bad, the crappy music is made worse by the fact that Roy Ward Baker, while a serviceable and experienced director more than capable of making a professional if almost generically-styled movie, obviously hadn't the foggiest clue of how to film music videos despite obviously trying to do so whenever the bands are on stage. He fails completely: never once looking to Russ Meyer or Eisenstein (MTV wasn't around for another year) for a clearer concept of montage and quick edit, or even trying to combine the song to the image or edit, he instead opts to do nothing special or, for one blue-faced guy (a laughably serious and miserable B. A. Robertson singing a generic-sounding 80s new wave turd entitled Sucker For Your Love), going crazy with the zoom — and, by doing so, managing to show the world, if only due to comparison, that Jess Franco as actually a master of the zoom. Major ouch. The songs and technique are a far cry from, say, the equally dated but nevertheless successful appearance of Bauhaus in The Hunger (1983 / trailer) singing Bela Lugosi Is Dead.

Opening titles to The Hunger— Bela Lugosi Is Dead:

The Monster Club: fun enough but hardly earthshaking, its plus points outweigh its flaws, but on the whole it is not the best movie of the director or of any of the familiar faces found in it. Go in with low expectations, and you might enjoy it, but we for one can't help but wonder why it should enjoy some sort of cult popularity...

*Actually, there are really so many other small logical flaws in every narrative that one really has to decide to consciously ignore them or the entire movie will become somewhat of a drag.

B. A. Robertson singing Sucker For Your Love:

R.I.P.: Harry H. Novak, Part VI: 1969

August 18, 2014, 12:57 am

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12 January  1928 — 26 March  2014

"When I was a kid, my Daddy told me, 'There's a buyer for everything.' And I lived to find out that he was right."
Harry H. Novak

Harry H. Novak, alongside David F Friedman (24 December 1923 — 14 February 2011) one of the great (s)exploitation kings of the last half of the 20th century, died 26 March 2014 at the age of 86.
A detailed career review of all the projects Harry H. Novak foisted upon the American public would be Sisyphean task at best and hardly possible, as no full and unequivocal list exists. What follows is a review of the films that we found that, for the most part, probably had Novak's involved somewhere along the way — and some that may not have. It is definitely not a complete list, and definitely not infallible, it is merely culled from sources reliable and unreliable that we found online. We also in no way suggest that the given release dates are the correct ones, they are merely the first ones we found.
If you know any we missed, feel free to send the title...

Go herefor Part II (1956–64)
Go herefor Part III (1965–1966)
Go herefor Part IV (1967)
Go herefor Part V (1968) 

The Hang Up

(1969, writ. & dir. John Hayes)

Aka Vice Cop 69. The usually reliable website Critical Condition lists this movie as one in which Harry Novak was involved — and who are we to disagree? John Hayes (1 March 1930 — 21 August 2000), who worked with Novak more than a couple of times, was a writer, director, editor, producer, and occasional actor who is still waiting for his low budget oeuvre to be reappraised.

Films in France calls the move "mediocre, definitely not a great piece of cinema but it has some mileage — give it a go if you have nothing better to do." The Kinsey Institute is even less kind: "The Hang Up is the story of vice cops who delve into a seedy underworld of sex and sin. In it, Sgt. Walsh (played by [Tony Vorno as] Sebastian Gregory) is a police officer who will use any means necessary to stop crimes, including cross-dressing for an undercover job. When Walsh becomes involved with a young hooker (Sharon Matt), he is cast deep into a world of prostitution and murder. [...] The Hang Up includes nudity and kinky sex. Similar to William Friedkin's Cruising (1980 / trailer), The Hang Up is a film that demonizes the various worlds of alternative sexuality even as it takes advantage of these worlds' erotic appeal." Is the last not the description of most sexploitation films?

Tony Vorno was also in Fandango (1970), which we look at later, and Sharon Matt, who was one of the lead gals in H.G. Lewis's Linda and Abilene (1969 / trailer + 2), seem to have retired after this movie. John Hayes also did such fine stuff as Five Minutes to Love (1963 / trailer), The Photographer (1974 / trailer), Garden of the Dead (1972 / full movie) and, under his porn director nom de plume Howard Perkins, Baby Rosemary (1976)

Also from John Hayes — Grave of the Vampire (1972):
 

Erotic Center

(1969, dir. Günter Hendel)

Original title: Eros Center Hamburg. According to a list at AV Maniacs, this German flick was rereleased on video by Something Strange as a Harry Novak/Boxoffice International Pictures. We can only guess he picked it up cheap, redubbed it and sent it out to the grindhouses were it surely met more groans than moans.

Director Günter Hendel was an active participant in the German Golden Age of Sexploitation, though hardly as productive as this film's scriptwriter Alois Brummer, who for about 20 years leaked sexploitation projects as regularly as a gonorrheal dick. The plot, loosely according to the German website Zelluliod: "An American journalist (Günter Hendel as Eddie Green) is writing a report about 'the ladies' that try to get ahead in life by walking slowly up and down the street. They tell him everything, without mincing words, about how they got to their job, what their clients demand, and how they do it. In Eros Center, the attractive Biggy (Doris Arden) is murdered, and everyone who was 'doing something' there that day immediately are suspects. This includes a dangerous group of pimps that hold perverse shows in their apartment, as well as Black and White, which in this case is not a brand of whisky but, rather, young pretty lesbians willing to do acts of love in detail. [...]" Among the suspects: Biggy's Italian boyfriend, a few Johns — and Eddie Green. Whodunnit is revealed at the very end. 

Bob Elger & His Orchestra covers Roland Kovac's Hunter's Beatfrom Eros Center Hamburg:

Wild, Free & Hungry

(1969, writ. & dir. Paul Hunt [as H.P. Edwards])

Presented by Harry Novak. We took a short look at this flick at the R.I.P. career review of Paul Hunt, where we wrote: "Once again, Paul Hunt [directing] as H.P. Edwards. TV Guide gives it one star and says: "A mega-melodrama about a carnival owner (Frank Cuva as Frank) who gets mixed up with the mob and a motorboat racer. Romance, violence, and fast-paced speedboating leave their scars on the carnival owner who eventually loses his wife, fortune, and carnival, while retaining his only true love, a carnival employee (Monica Gayle as Diane). A happy ending has all his lost property returned to him. Tune in next week for another episode of..."

The biggest "name" in the cast is cinematographer Gary Garver (20 July 1938 — 16 November 2006) — The Howling (1981 / trailer), Eaten Alive (1977 / trailer), Invasion of the Bee Girls (1973 / trailer), Sweet Sixteen (1983 / trailer), Dracula vs. Frankenstein (1971), Toolbox Murders (1978 / trailer), Satan's Sadists (1969 / trailer) Horror of the Blood Monsters (1970 / trailer) and Bummer (1973 / trailer), among many — who, under the names Robert McCulum, Robert McCallun, Robert Mc Callum, Robert Mccullam, Robert Mccullum and June Moon also had a lasting career as a hardcore porno director; we looked at a few of his porn movies somewhere along the way in our (currently) 7-part R.I.P. review of the films of Harry Reems.

Invasion of the Bee Girls (1973) — Full P.D. Movie:
 

The Secret Sex Lives of Romeo and Juliet
(1969, Peter Perry Jr. [as "A.P. Stootsberry"])

 

Distributed by Novak / Boxoffice International. Another movie by Peter Perry Jr. — who despite popular misconception is/was not Bethel Buckalew (who was the production manager on this film) — directing a "A.P. Stootsberry", a pseudonym that (possibly) both Perry and Buckalew may have used; proud of their films, it seems, they were not. A year later scriptwriter "Jim Macher / Jim Maher" followed up this movie with The Notorious Cleopatra (1970).

Trailer:

The secret sex lives of Romeo and Julietvon Piccioso

At Johnny LaRue's Crane Shot, Marty McKee writes: "Laugh-In was clearly a major influence on Jim Macher, the screenwriter [...]. Shakespeare's lauded lovers break the fourth wall, toss off witty bon mots, and get psychedelic between sexploits. Catchphrases like 'Sock it to me' and 'Here come de Prince' abound, and Perry often interrupts scenes for quick cutaways to Joke Wall-style gags. 

The film [...] uses the conceit that it's a 16th-century production of Shakespeare's play performed before a group of hairy California hippies hilariously pretending to be drunken revelers. Cast members introduce themselves to the camera, many of them, like Perry, using pseudonyms. [...] To Perry, sex is a lot of rubbing and moaning — nothing hardcore, but still X-rated (though Boxoffice International tended to send these quickies out unrated). [...] Secret Sex Lives, like other period sex romps made by Perry, is rather sumptuous in its sets and costumes, which lends the sophomoric and sometimes smutty humor a touch of class it probably doesn't deserve. [...] Long lovemaking scenes aren't my cup of tea, but the enthusiastic cast and good-natured gagging make Perry’s picture one of the more entertaining of the sexploitation genre."

Forman Shane (Romeo) and Dee Lockwood (Juliet) also shared the screen together in The Undercover Scandals of Henry VIII (1970) and (supposedly) the under-appreciated horror Day of the Nightmare (1969 / full movie).

Riverboat Mama
(1969, dir. Bob Favorite)

 "Wanted: For the sensuous slave mutiny of Alligator Creek."

Aka Muddy Mama. Floridian regional filmmaker Robert "Bob" Favorite (died: 1978) went on to Indian Raid, Indian Made and the horror film The Brides Wore Blood (1972 / full movie).

The Muddy Mama of the title, "Morgana", is played by Morganna Roberts — aka "Morgana the Wild One" on exotic dance stages — who had her intermittent 15 minutes throughout the 70s, 80s and 90s not as a sleaze starlet but as the "Kissing Bandit", the buxom big-haired babe that used to run out onto baseball diamonds around the US to kiss this or that Major League player (pre-plasticized Pete Rose, for example) — when she expanded her range to basketball, she got Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (of Airplane! [1980 / trailer]). Extremely curvy, she nevertheless hadn't yet gone quiet so silicone crazy when she made this movie.

Also on board Riverboat Mama (and Indian Raid, Indian Made), the slightly less well-endowed but better-looking Dawn Diano — "Miss Nude Galaxy"— as the brunette "captive".

The plot? Who knows: we couldn't find a review anywhere online. Film Advise, one of the few to bother to write anything, simply quotes the poster: "The waters of the muddy Mississippi run wild with savage pleasure and sadistic danger."

 
Morganna Show Her Boobs from Riverboat Mama:

Morganna the kissing banditvon Beezer61




Indian Raid, Indian Made

(1969, dir. Bob Favorite)

Another movie from Floridian regional filmmaker Robert "Bob" Favorite (died: 1978) which, like Riverboat Mama, features the bouncing charms of Morganna and Dawn "Miss Nude Galaxy" Diano (as well as those of the forgotten dancers Glory Bee and Tiffany Lace).

Lots of T&A and "hard" softcore sex in this "forgettable hillbilly softcore sex comedy", as eegah-3 (eegah@hotmail.com) of Minneapolis, MN, calls the movie. In his opinion, one should "Skip the first hour of this flick and go straight to this film's sole interest, an extended native dance performed by the one and only Morganna. This long, one-shot performance seems out of place in a film this amateurish. The rest of the film deals with a secret agent, horny hillbillies and an Indian woman these half-wits chase after."

At Dodjer, Lucy Pinman writes a bit more: "'Boy, this is weird!' exclaims Morganna ('The Wild One!') [...]! When it comes to weird, the gal knew whereof she spoke. This particular piece of weirdness [...] opens with the credits painted onto the shapely torso of a vixen sponging herself down in a shower. A skin flick that opens so aptly knows what it's about: smut jokes, jiggling ta-ta's, smiling beavers, and tons o' buns. When secret agent Harold (Chuck Davis) gets the call to infiltrate and end a moonshine operation at the Pleasant Point Resort, open season is declared on common sense and subtlety. A car trunk slams down on his hand; he gets trapped in a phone booth choking on the top secret missive he's instructed to eat; and a radio broadcast of a baseball game offers blow-by-blow commentary on the blowjob he receives in the front seat of his car. All this before Harold even arrives at the Pleasant Point Resort. Once there, he's engaged in one roll in the hay after another, by every chick in the flick. Indeed, the only thing agent Harold seems to be infiltrating is the abundant pudenda. But don't worry. Another agent is on the scene. Disguised as Little Dove, an Indian maiden, she convinces the two idiot brothers who operate the illegal still that they are the last of 'the Jerkaloopies.''We're Injuns!' they cry. 'We's real Jerkaloopies!' They sure are. The two 'Jerkaloopies' then attack their own lodge and tie up Harold and his women. But before any scalps are lifted, Morganna, who's a guest at the resort, comes to the rescue by performing 'The Devil Dance,' featuring the heaviest hooters this side of Hades. Then she takes her act on the road, driving off in her convertible with the two Jerkaloopies in the back seat shooting toy arrows at the camera."

3.07 NSFW Minutes of Pretty Hardcore Softcore "Indian" Skin:



Kinpeibai
(1969, dir. Kôji Wakamatsu)

 

Aka The Notorious Concubines, The Concubines, and King Ping Meh — Chinesischer Liebesreigen; based on the novel Chin Ping Mei by Shin-Chen Wang. Another Japanese pink movie released in and adapted for the US by Harry Novak; the US adaption was scripted by James E. McLarty, the scriptwriter behind Don Hendersons's fun sleazefests The Babysitter (1969 / trailer) and The Touch of Satan (1971 / trailer).

Director Kôji Wakamatsu (1 April 1936 — 17 October 2012) was/is considered one the great pink film directors, a man whose movies tilt into the realm of serious art film and a regular participant at film festivals around the world. As producer, he stood behind one of the most internationally successful pinku eiga ever made, Nagisa Ōshima's In the Realm of the Senses (1976 / trailer). Wakamatsu was killed by a cab in Tokyo on his way home from a film budget meeting.

Hong Kong Digital, which is of the opinion that "[Novak's] alterations have largely negated whatever merits the original version possessed", explains the plot at follows: "Director Koji Wakamatsu [...] occasionally worked on more mainstream projects like this Shochiku adaptation of the scandalous Chinese erotic novel Jin Ping Mei, the content of which is potent enough for the book to remain banned in China to this day. Pan Jin-lien (Tomoko Mayama [seen below]), the beautiful, scheming wife of rice seller Wu Ta (Hatsuo Yamatani), has an affair but is forgiven this transgression by her obsequious husband. The woman quickly gives in to temptation and poisons Ta, but fears what the man's brother, soldier Wu Sung (Shikokyu Takashima), might do upon returning to the region. Sure enough, upon seeing his brother's spirit tablet, Sung goes berserk, commits murder, and is sentenced to death. In the meantime, Jin-lien has become the fifth wife of decadent Hsi Men-ching (future director Juzo Itami) but is soon forgotten by the drinking, carousing nobleman. Jin-lien also has a hostile relationship with her fellow concubines and, when Men-ching marries a sixth time and fathers a son with his new bride, Jin-lien murders the baby. Men-ching drowns his sorrows in wine and sex but he has worse problems ahead: Wu Sung has escaped execution and is leading a group of murderous bandits into the territory."

DVD Verdict says "The Notorious Concubines is really two movies. The first film is a slow, arcane muddle about wives, warlords, and wanton lust. Nothing much happens, and scenes go on forever with no real point. The second film, starting about 50 minutes in, is a visionary and intriguing tale, half Fellini-esque characters and imagery, half psychotic Shogun warrior. The two never reconcile themselves, and this makes Concubines an overall unsatisfying movie." (Sounds like an art film to us.)

In LA, rufasff sums up the film thus: "Dark, cynical Japanese epic brought to U.S. in a dubbed version by shlockmeister Harry Novak. Still, this gory, sexy epic is made with style and interesting for to compare to Yojimbo (1961 / trailer) and other masterworks of the form."

Full NSFW Movie @ a NSFW Website:
 

Weekend Lovers
(1969, dir. Dwayne Avery)

Aka Porno Motel, includes a couple of crappy ballads sung by lead actor Vic Lance, who did the music for this and a number of other sexploiters. The script was later adapted by "Emil Ludwig" as a book for the adults-only publishing house Greenleaf Classics but, oddly enough, re-titled as Weekend Warriors. 

According to New York City's porn-loving lor, this "Soft-core story of a cad is almost a winner"; One Sheet Index gives the details: "Posing as a Navy Submariner, girl-hungry Scott Bennett (Lance) walks a California desert highway each weekend, conspicuously available to interested, attractive female drivers, who frequently check into his reserved motel room for fun and games. Then he meets cuddly, blonde Kerry Chandler (Chris Mathis); and though his kooky antics puzzle her, they share plenty of romance. ... [But] Kerry awakens to find herself alone, for 'Sin Bad' has changed to civvies at a nearby gas-station; his weekend fling concluded. Slowly realizing his love for her, he hurries back to tell her the truth . . . but too late.

"With Kerry gone, unhappy Scott is picked up by Ginger Bennett (Antoinette Maynard), his swingin' sister [...]. Ginger notices her brothers' loneliness and seductively coaxes computer-operator Phil Brooks (Bruce Douglas) to check Scott's compatibility with her college girlfriend. Back on the desert, Scott's trying to shake the blues. A motorcycling nymphomaniac rescues him from a burly truck-driver, then wears him to a frazzle under the Joshua trees.

"Meanwhile, Ginger's college chum shows up, and co-incidentally turns out to be Kerry Chandler. Shaken to realize Ginger's brother is the 'sailor' who jilted her on the desert, Kerry plans revenge. . . but softens when she discovers how much he's hung up on her. Nearly destroyed by the man-hungry nympho, Scott finally gets to the motel to call Ginger, but is shocked to see her car parked in front of "his" room. He gets another surprise when he finds Kerry waiting for him . . . but a very pleasant surprise, indeed..." 

Two Thousand Weeks

(1969, dir. Tim Burstall [20 April 1927 — 19 April 2004])

According to TCM, Novak distributed this Australian movie in the US. One can only wonder how a sleaze merchant like him ended up with a "serious" flick like this one — though as we all know, it isn't the content that counts, it's the marketing. To simply quote the current entry at Wikipedia: "Tim Burstall was [...] best known for the motion picture Alvin Purple (1973). [A sex farce that enjoyed two lesser sequels.]

Trailers to Alvin Purple (1973) & Alvin Rides Again (1974):

"Burstall was a key figure in Australian postwar cinema and was instrumental in rebuilding the Australian film industry at a time when it had been effectively dead for years. [...] Burstall earned a place in Australian cinema history as the writer and director of the feature 2000 Weeks. Released in 1969, it was Australia's first locally-made feature film since Charles Chauvel's Jedda in 1955."

Trailer to Jedda (1955):

The plot, also thanks to Wikipedia: "Will (Mark McManus), a writer in his thirties, faces a crisis in his life when he has to choose between his wife (Eileen Chapman) and mistress (Jeanie Drynan). He is also on the fence about choices in his professional life, something that is accentuated when he meets a childhood friend who has become a successful TV producer in England. He calculates he has two thousand weeks left in his life to achieve success."

Soundtrack to 2000 Weeks:
 

Wanda, The Sadistic Hypnotist
 (1969, writ. & dir. Greg Corarito)

"What are you doing to me? Lady, you don't understand, I'm a Republican!"
Sylvester ("Dick Dangerfield")

We have our doubts that Harry Novak had his sticky fingers in the pie that is Wanda, The Sadistic Hypnotist, primarily because it is still available at Something Weird, but a number of online reviews and sources (including Funhouse) give credit to Novak, so here it is.

Woman in Prison Films describes the movie so: "Following his car crash, Wanda (Katharine Shubeck, above) and Greta (Janine Sweet) kidnap the semi-conscious Sylvester (Richard Compton as 'Dick Dangerfield') into their place. He is then tied up to a bed, hypnotized, whipped and raped by Wanda's women. Can an escaped mental patient break in and even the odds? This is a strange flick, but don't mistake it to be anything of actual quality. It's horribly directed with lots of over-the-top acting. The director has no idea how to keep a pace going or include anything resembling continuity. Fortunately, I'd have it no other way when dealing with this psychedelic nudie cutie. There's [sic] several sex scenes that go on for a bit too long, but the absurdity and the hilarious dialog make it completely worth watching for fans of this kind of crap. It's one of the most entertaining products I've seen from Something Weird in a long while, and you know that's saying a lot."

Groovy Soundtrack —
Al Quick & The Mechanics' Theme to Wanda, The Sadistic Hypnotist:

Neither Katharine Shubeck (below) nor Janine Sweet seem to have ever made another movie, but Richard Compton (2 March 1938 — 11 August 2007) went on to have a rather successful career as a TV director after he stopped acting in Z-films like this one. In-between the two stages of his career, he also directed a number of decent B-films of his own — among others, Welcome Home, Soldier Boys (1971 / shoot out) and Return to Macon County (1975 / first 15 minutes) — as well as the two depressing exploitation classics, Macon County Line (1974 / trailer) and Jackson County Jail (1976 / trailer).

Director Greg Corarito, on the other hand, never left the realm of Z-films and pretty much retired after the breast and rape-heavy sexploiter Delinquent Schoolgirls (1975), though he did raise his head in 1992 to suddenly release the forgotten (possibly lost) regional exploiter, The Bikini Keys.

Delinquent School Girls (1975):
 

Dracula (The Dirty Old Man)
(1969, writ. & dir. William Edwards)

As with Wanda, The Sadistic Hypnotist, we have our doubts that Harry Novak had his sticky fingers in the pie that is Dracula (The Dirty Old Man), primarily because it is still available at Something Weird, but a number of online reviews and sources (including Funhouse) give credit to Novak, so for the benefit of doubt here it is.

Dracula (The Dirty Old Man) is one of those types of movies that make you wonder what drugs people took in the days of our grandparents. Was this totally psychotronic flick ever a truly serious project, or was it always the inane joke it seems to be? We find it hard to believe that this movie ever got released anywhere, much less that it still survives today — but the world is a better place for it. (Not.)

Clip from Dracula (The Dirty Old Man):

Jerry Saravia writes: "Shot on the single half of a shoestring budget, this soft-core porn flick (pardon, I meant a skinflick) is so crummy and vile that not much enjoyment can be derived from it.

"Count Dracula (Vince Kelly) is named Count Alucard [...] and he lives in his coffin in a cave out in the desert with two torches on each side of the coffin. [...] The Count visits suburban homes, standing outside women's bedrooms, looking for nubile women who might look good naked. But he needs help and receives it from a local reporter (Billy Whitton) who looks like an insurance salesman. Good old Count changes him into a werewolf and calls him Irving Jackelmann. The Count sends Jackelmann off looking for women for the Count to sink his teeth into, specifically in the breast. The movie begins with the most absurd narration this side of the Ed Wood, Jr. fence, [...]. 

"None of the clearly post-dubbed lines of dialogue match anything the characters say (apparently the recorded sound was so horrendous, it needed to be redubbed). [...] The movie has several sex scenes and one with the Jackelmann that is so disturbing and drags on for far too long (let's say it is narcoleptic) that it uses humor to make us forget the vile act itself (it doesn't work). And watching Dracula lick his lips with eye-rolling delight becomes tedious."

Full movie, while it lasts:

The same year writer/director William Edwards regurgitated this film, he wrote and produced two other Z-budget flicks, Ride a Wild Stud (1969 / 10 minutes) and The Mummy and the Curse of the Jackals (1969 / stripper killed), both of which were directed by former Western and low budget director and scriptwriter Oliver Drake (28 May 1903 — 19 August 1991), who entered the industry during the silents.

Oliver Drake wrote the script —
Elmer Clifton's City of Missing Girls (1941):




 To be continued... one day.

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Misc. Film Fun: Fessenden Frankenstein Mashup

August 21, 2014, 4:09 am

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Short Film: Balloon Land (USA, 1935)

August 26, 2014, 3:24 am

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Aka The Pincushion Man. Way back in 2012, while researching the old Max Fleischer cartoon Bimbo's Initiation(USA, 1931), which we presented as the Short Film of the Month for January 2013, we came upon the entertaining Cracked.com online article 5 Old Children's Cartoons Way Darker Than Most Horror Movies, whencewe found Swing You Sinners(1930), our Short Film of the Month for October 2013. And now, here, yet another bat-shit crazy short from days long gone by that we were led to by Cracked.com, a masterpiece of a drug-addled kiddy cartoon by the great Ub Iwerks (24 March 1902 — 7 July 1971) — who, by the way, not only co-created Mickey Mouse but was the creative power behind our Short Film of the Month for March 2010, The Skeleton Dance (USA, 1929). 

Balloon Land is one of 25 animated short films making up the ComiColor Cartoon oeuvre, which Iwerks produced between 1933 and 36 using "Cinecolor"; Iwerks studio folded soon thereafter and he spent the rest of his life working for others — among his roster of achievements: the special effects to Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds (1963 / trailer), for which he was nominated for an Oscar. (On a less prestigious note, but concerning the short Balloon Land and not Iwerks: Balloon Land is seen in one of the all-time great bad films that help make Ed Wood Jr look like Orson Wells, The Devil's Gift [1984 / trailer]).

The more generally famous animator Chuck Jones, who worked for Iwerk early in his career, once said that "Iwerks is Screwy [Skrewi] spelled backwards." And while Iwerk's last name is real (i.e., inherited from his father, Eert Ubbe Iwerks), in idea Jones is conveying is the truth — and Balloon Land is perhaps one of Iwerks' screwiest cartoons of all. It is also, as Cracked.com points out in a paragraph entitled Condom People vs. The Masturbating Monster, oddly perverse from frame one: "Right from the title screen, this 1935 cartoon [...] lets you know there's going to be a somewhat disturbing recurrent motif in the story. Let's see if you can spot it."

The short opens with an illustrative presentation of the reproductive processes of the Balloon People, followed by an educational ditty fit for a horror movie: "Now beware, have a care, you're just filled with air, a single pin would rip your skin, and the Pincushion Man in the forest there would pop you both if you don't take care." 

Needless to say, like any good bodycount film, no matter how short, the incredulous youth wander off to look for the mythical killer and find him: a psychopathic perve who kills just 'cause he can and who looks literally like he is either always sticking the tip of his sharp prick in his nose or is poking his pointy member at kids or strangers. We can't help but ask, "What drugs were they one when they thought this one up?"

Of course, like so many films of the day (and long before and long after [see, for example, our Short Film of the Month for May 2013, Jasper and the Haunted House]), the mandatory, offensively racist stereotype can't be skipped — neither the Balloon Man who lets the psycho into Balloon Land nor the second victim of Pincushion Man's rampage would look out of place eating fried chicken in a watermelon patch.

These two offensive aspects are part of the appeal of Balloon Land, our Short Film of the Month for August 2013. We're sure you'll find other appealing aspects when you watch the short yorself. Enjoy.

Dead Before Dawn 3D (Canada, 2012)

September 1, 2014, 1:54 am

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Plot: so, what do we got? The almost eternally slumming Christopher Lloyd — see Piranha 3D (2010 / trailer) &  Piranha 3DD(2013 / trailer) — doing his patented Doc Brown schtick as Horus Galloway, the owner of Occult Barn, who asks his milquetoast grandson Casper Galloway (Devon Bostick of The Hidden 3D [2011 / trailer]) to mind the store while he is away. Casper, out to impress a babe named Charlotte Baker (Martha MacIsaac of the extremely unnecessary Last House on the Left remake [2009 / trailer]) and "friends", drops an urn containing a demon spirit which, instead of being happy about being freed, curses the giggling group of disbelieving (much-too-old-for) high-school kids: as of 10 PM, anyone they have eye contact with will kill themselves and turn into a zombie and... Well, needless to say, long before dawn the whole town is walking dead. Can the young adults end the curse and save the world?

Trailer:

Trailers, how we hate them. You see one somewhere and think, "Wow! That looks like my kind of film!" and then you finally see the frigging movie and feel more disappointed than, dunno, the day you found out there really isn't a Santa Claus.

According to Bloody Disgusting, Dead Before Dawn 3D, directed by April Mullen of Niagara Falls, "the youngest and only woman ever to direct a film of this kind", is also "the first live-action, fully Canadian Stereoscopic 3D feature". We would hazard to guess that it is also the first and only zom-com to have been made at Niagara Falls, and while it is not the only zombie or zom-com film that we know of to have been made in Canada — Pontypool(2008 / trailer), a zombie film, and Fido (2006 / trailer), a zom-com, both come promptly to mind — we are fairly sure that it does lay claim to being the first Canadian zom-com that sucks.

OK, maybe it doesn't suck like Linda Lovelace or Little Oral Annie, but it does suck in a micro-penis kind of way: as a zombie film, it never scares and keeps the gore low, and as a comedy, the laughs are too few. It is mildly diverting at best, the chuckles and rare belly laugh — yes, it has some of both, but too few of either — over-shadowed by the all-too-regular groans. And while two or three characters do eventually become endearing — ebay-cup-dealer Seth Munday (played by scriptwriter Tim Doiron), semi-goth good girl babe with moxie Becky Fords (played by director April Mullen) and brainless cheerleader Lucy Winthrop (Brittany Allen), to be exact — most never transcend their stereotype and the movie on a whole never truly becomes fun to watch. True, it becomes a bit more bearable after the curse hits, but then stumbles in a big way at the resolution, ending not with a bang or a wimper but, as it started: predictably, and with a groaner.

Take away the demon bit, toss out the totally unnecessary 3D effects, and all that's left is a blood-lite "horror" comedy that not only suffers from too much contrivance and too many unconvincing stock characters — beware actor Brandon Jay McLaren (of Tucker and Dale vs. Evil[2010 / trailer]), lest you become doomed to always play the obligatory Afro-American/Canadian character, eternally out of place amongst a circle of lily-white middle-class stereotypes* — but that has, if you get down to it, been done way better before in much funnier films, both "big budget" (Zombieland[2009] and Warm Bodies [2013 / trailer]), low budget (Return of the Living Dead [1985 / trailer]), and indie (Dead & Breakfast[2004 / trailer] and Zombies of Mass Destruction[2009 / trailer]).

We came away from Dead Before Dawn 3D seriously regretting that we hadn't simply re-watched Dance of the Dead(2008 / trailer) instead — which is what you should do.

 

*A typecasting all the more glaring, actually, in the disappointing TV series Harper's Island (trailer), in which he is the only non-WASP amongst a huge gathering of the type of inbred white folks who not only don't usually know any Black people, but also find Asians and South Americans not proper as dinner guests. On Harper's Island, however, it must be said that the filmmakers at least not only kept him around longer than most minorities ever survive on-screen, but he developed into one of the most fully-rounded, believable and likeable of all the characters.

R.I.P.: Harry H. Novak, Part VII: 1970

September 8, 2014, 2:04 am

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12 January  1928 — 26 March  2014

"When I was a kid, my Daddy told me, 'There's a buyer for everything.' And I lived to find out that he was right."
Harry H. Novak

Harry H. Novak, alongside David F Friedman (24 December 1923 — 14 February 2011) one of the great (s)exploitation kings of the last half of the 20th century, died 26 March 2014 at the age of 86. 

A detailed career review of all the projects Harry H. Novak foisted upon the American public would be Sisyphean task at best and hardly possible, as no full and unequivocal list exists. What follows is a review of the films that we found that, for the most part, probably had Novak's involved somewhere along the way — and some that may not have. It is definitely not a complete list, and definitely not infallible, it is merely culled from sources reliable and unreliable that we found online. We also in no way suggest that the given release dates are the correct ones, they are merely the first ones we found.

If you know any we missed, feel free to send the title...

Go here for Part I

Go here for Part II: 1956-64

Go here for Part III: 1965-66

Go here for Part IV: 1967 

Go here for Part V: 1968

Go here forPart VI: 1969

Judy
(1970, dir. David W. Hanson & George Meadows)

Who knows who George Meadows is, but D.W. Hanson is the director of Night of the Bloody Transplant (1970 / stripper scene); like that film, Judy is an independent regional disaster — unlike that film, Boxoffice International distributed Judy somewhere along the way.

Mondo Digital, which says the movie is "worth a watch for fans of low-grade grindhouse trash", explains the movie: "[...] Judy, which pads out its first eight minutes with a dialogue-free interracial lesbian love scene* before the title even appears. Suddenly we cut to a suburban neighborhood where a young girl named Regina (Lee Sherry) takes a walk out into the woods to go drawing by a creek, only to wind up topless and beaten nearly to death by the water thanks to an unseen assailant. That means it's time for her dad to call in a rough, tough crime-fighting palooka named Mr. Sloan (Dave Haller) [...]. The victim (who still has enough energy to disrobe in front of her mirror) can only describe her attacker as 'mean and ugly,' so it's off to find the perpetrator (after a quick roll in the hay between Sloan and his secretary), who's now escalated to gagging women with pink scarves and strangling them. His main source for information is a combative, fiery-haired stripper named Velvet Harris (Sandy O'Hara), who wants to settle down with Sloan if he can get his act together. However, the killer seems to be one step ahead of him, and it's going to take every weapon in Sloan's arsenal to stop the parade of naked women getting throttled to stock lounge music.

Sandy O'Hara's Fan Dance Routine
(Not from the Film):

If you loved the stilted dialogue scenes in Blood Feast (1963 / trailer / full news), you'll be in sheer nirvana with this [...]. Every scene is both sordid and gaudy, with eye-punishing colors and wood paneling galore framing actors mouthing off one acid-laced but wooden line after another."

Over at imdb, Woodyanders (Woodyanders@aol.com) of the Last New Jersey Drive-In on the Left says that: "While this movie suffers from flat direction by David W. Hanson, a plodding pace, and poor acting from a lame no-name cast, it nonetheless still manages to sustain the viewer's interest thanks to the lurid subject matter, a sleazy narrative that combines a seedy film noir atmosphere with kinky giallo-type elements [...], a generous amount of tasty female nudity, and a few seamy soft-core sex scenes [...]. The clumsily staged violence delivers several unintentional belly laughs. Moreover, the bevy of fine looking ladies keep this movie watchable: Ravishing redhead Sandy O'Hara, slender tanned fox Judith Lowe, busty luscious brunette Lee Sherry, and leggy blonde dish Toula Flambouris. With its wealth of static master shots and frequent use of queasy zoom-ins, John Hargrove's plain cinematography provides an appropriately rough'n'ready visual aesthetic. The groovy score hits the swinging spot."

Trailer to Judy (and The Night Hustlers):

* According to Third Eye Cinema, it ain't no lezzie scene: "A rather pretty ginger-haired 60s swinging stewardess type walks into a lushly red carpeted, walnut paneled hotel room and removes her odd tearaway garter belt and giant underwear. A really disturbing black she-male in a blonde fright wig undresses and starts making out with her in closeup. S/he's got a lot of white powder around his/'hir' lips. Is there some deep symbolic meaning to all this we're not privy to? Was 'hir' thing powdered donuts or something? And why would director David W. Hanson subject us to this genderbender horror show?"

Substitution
(1970, dir. Walt Davis)

Novak produced and distributed this movie here, which could well be the directorial debut of Walt Davis (aka David Stefans aka Mike T. Lawn), who has long fallen off the face of the earth but for the decade of the 70s was involved in a number of noteworthy films and, according to Fred Adelman of Critical Condition, "was way ahead of his time. All of Davis's films should be re-evaluated today. He should have a cult following". Davis is remembered today, if at all, for his odd horror flick Evil Come Evil Go (1972) and his legendary: hardcore porno gore movie Sex Psycho aka Blue Widow (1971). (In Sex Psycho, he even added to the shock value of gore porn by including "an absurdly lengthy gay porn sequence between two extraneous characters" in the straight gore porno flick: he himself tops Charles Lish's bottom.) 

This movie here, however, though it has a lot of nekkid 70s skin, is neither porn not gore but a comedy, which is why TV Guide has a plot synopsis: "Henry Hedon (Chuck Sailor) and Alice Hedon (Patrice Nastasia) are bored with each other sexually. Sailor's buddy suggests he visit the Mahariji, and Sailor skeptically goes. While he waits in bed for his wife the first night after he has returned from his pilgrimage, Sailor has second thoughts; then an extraordinarily attractive woman appears and gives him the night of his life. And this routine continues night after night: his wife goes to the bathroom to get ready and out steps another gorgeous woman. It seems that Sailor has learned to use his imagination to transform his wife into other alluring creatures, while she has learned to do the same thing with him."

While It Lasts — Evil Come Evil Go (the Full Movie):

Evil Come, Evil Govon crazedigitalmovies

Wilbur and the Baby Factory
(1970, dir. Tom McGowan as "Tom Wolfe")

Aka Love Machine and The Pleasure Farm. Harry Novak was an executive producer and distributor of this film directed by Tom McGowan, a name we only became familiar with as he is one of five named directors in Night Train to Terror (USA, 1985), one of our all time favorite cinematic disaterpieces. (His horror film Cataclysm [1980 / full movie] is edited into Night Train to Terror.)

DVD Verdict says that the movie is "More serious than sexy, and as thought-provoking as it is flesh-flaunting, Wilbur and the Baby Factory represents a kind of anomaly in the world of exploitation. [...] Writer/director Tom Wolfe (no, not the Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test scribe [...]) takes on the subjects of birth control, genetic engineering, and reproduction manipulation, and delivers a devastating, insightful cinematic screed. This is one angry filmmaker, flummoxed by the concept of violating nature for the sake of responsibility-free nookie. Using his hero, the well-meaning Wilbur (played by Glenn Ford's son Peter, under the pseudonym 'Tom Shea'), as his voice and the rest of the cast as the corrupt system he intends to overthrow, Wolfe wastes no time in separating his motion picture from other softcore sex epics." 

Video Vacuum explains the plot: "Hippie Wilbur Steele is about to get drafted to Nam when he gets signed up for a bizarre experiment in which he has to impregnate 2000 women. At first it seems like a dream come true, but Wilbur slowly grows disenchanted with his rigorous schedule of fucking foxes and begins to become wary of his mysterious benefactor. It turns out that the experiment is bankrolled by a bitter billionaire with a dick the size of a peanut (the great Stuart Lancaster from Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill! [1966 / trailer]) who has a secret plan to sterilize the entire population of the United States. This premise sounds like it could've been a lot of fun; however director Tom McGowan is out to make one of those 'message' movies. I don't know exactly what the 'message' is, but there are a lot of mentions of the Vietnam War, the pill, and hippies spouting endlessly about God knows what. McGowan shoots all of the sex scenes about the same, using garish colors to make things look as psychedelic as possible. [...] While all of the boning scenes suffer from a dated flower-powery look to them, at least there are a lot of them and they feature a lot of female flesh. Things would have been a lot easier on the audience if McGowan had set out to make a groovy sex comedy and not a damn statement though. [...] If dated fashions and ideals are the kind of thing you want to see in your late 60s softcore sex movie, then Wilbur and the Baby Factory is for you."

Trailer:

The Golden Box
(1970, dir. Don Davis)

One Sheet Index offers the following somewhat elliptical synopsis of the movie: "A hired gun (Roger Gentry) bungles the murder of a piano player, and steals his music box ... which contains the secret of The Golden Box. In wild cross-country chase, Diane (Marsha Jordan) and Donna (Ann Perry) try to steal the book back from the killer. In a nude Gin Rummy game in a luxurious New York hotel, they decide how to do it: SEX. How else would two luscious blondes plot to steal anything? Plus their affairs with the dead piano player ... and the killer's business in Washington D.C. An unconventional brother-sister act in New Orleans. In an ancient Chicago organ-loft, the girls crack the code. The spectacular cross-country chase ends in the canals of Venice, California ... quite unexpectedly."

Roger Gentry (25 October 1934 — 16 December 2013) can be found in all sorts of fun stuff including The Wizard of Mars (1965 / full movie) Gallery of Horror (1967 / full movie), The Thing with Two Heads (1972 / trailer), Sleazy Rider (1973 / whole movie), Dixie Dynamite (1976 / trailer) and:

The Black Gestapo (1975):

Ann Perry went on to write and direct triple-X porn, including Sweet Savage (1979 / full movie) though she herself only acted in softcore. Sweet Savage, a western, is generally considered a masterpiece of Old West porn. As for the great Don Davis (7 June 1932 — 23 September 1982), a few films and years later, he was "retired".

Trailer to Don Davis'Swamp Girl (1971):

The Dark Side of Tomorrow
(1970, dir. Jack Deerson [as Jacque Beerson] & Barbara Peeters)

Aka Just the Two of Us. The directorial debut of Barbara Peeters, who went on to do the biker flick Bury Me an Angel (1972 / trailer), the comedies Summer School Teachers (1974 / trailer) and Starhops (1978), and the original version of the sleazy "nature gone wild" horror classic Humanoids from the Deep (1980 / trailer below).

Trailer to Humanoids from the Deep (1980):

TV Guide calls The Dark Side of Tomorrow"A sensitive portrayal of loneliness and lesbianism, the story involves two suburban housewives, Denise (Elizabeth Plumb) and Adria (Alisa Courtney). Their husbands are constantly away on aerospace business, leaving the two alone. The women are lunching at a Sunset Strip cafe when they spy a lesbian couple at the next table. The two are fascinated by their behavior. Adria is intrigued but scared, while Denise is upset by her attraction to her friend. Adria initiates the affair and the two behave like two teenage lovers until Adria switches her attention to a young actor, Jim (John Aprea of To the Limit [1995]). Denise is deeply hurt and tries to go gay all the way with a dykie fashion designer who seduces her on a pool table in the middle of a party. The film is often heavy-handed and gets bogged down in long philosophical dissertations." 

As DVD Verdict says, "Clearly, this one was not made for the raincoat crowd": "Although it's a Novak-produced film, Just the Two of Us is neither sleazy nor sick (unless you're offended by women in polyester muumuus sitting around garishly decorated homes — or if that whole infidelity thing bothers you). Compared to the typical Boxoffice International production, this one is positively chaste. There is a notable lack of nudity, and what is there is in service of the story. The acting is pretty good, and both the characters and the themes are treated sensitively."

 

Has Nothing to Do with the Movie — 

Bill Withers Singing Just the Two of Us:

Jet Set Swingers

(1970, dir. Tonino Valerii)

Another foreign film distributed by Box International. Original title, La ragazza di nome Giulio; aka Das Mädchen Julius, Model Love and A Girl Called Jules. Interesting when looking at the posters is the difference in the presentation by Novak in the US and the presentation in Europe. "Jet Set Swingers" was Valerii's fourth directorial project and an official selection to the 1970 Berlin Film Festival; it was also his first non-Spaghetti Western. Among his better-known movies are Day of Anger (1967 / trailer http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kXpcW50Fjps), The Price of Power (1969 / Italo trailer http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lMNKMiCzdxk), My Dear Killer (1972 / trailer below), A Reason to Live, a Reason to Die! (1972 / trailer http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2vSHpb528Ns) and — of course — My Name Is Nobody (1973 / trailer).

Trailer to My Dear Killer (1972):

Over at imdb, cranston mcmillan (cranstonman@O2.co.uk) of Scotland wrote the blurb used most often on-line: "After his Western triumphs, Valerii stepped out of the shadow of Sergio Leone with this distinctly Bergmanesque sexual melodrama. [Silvia] Dionisio is perfect in the title role and this remains her best film, Valerii turns up along the way too. Just when the film hits a period of auto pilot, John Steiner (of Bodycount [1986 / trailer], Cut and Run [1985 / trailer], I Don't Want to be Born [1975 / trailer], Schock (1977 / see below), Caligula [1979 / trailer] and Salon Kitty [1976]) turns up in the final reel for a climax that is quite unforgettable. A bit difficult to trace but well worth the effort." 

Italian Trailer to Schock (1977):

Unhinged Cinema explains the plot: "Shocked by an adolescent homosexual experience, Jules (Silvia Dionisio of Andy Warhol's Dracula [1974 / trailer below]) begins to encounter many problems with her feminine identity, and ultimately men. She falls in love with a highly promiscuous female and this is where her real problems begin! Based upon the 1964 novel written by Milena Milani, one of the earliest pioneering feminist assessments of sexual differences in fascist Italy. The director Tonino Valerri [...] does a superb job of crafting out a film from a difficult novel. Highly obscure and very difficult to find these days, A Girl Called Jules is well worth viewing for fans of Bergman and 60s Italian cult Cinema."

Trailer to Andy Warhol's Dracula (1974):

The German website Zelluliod adds some details: "Julius is a girl. Her mother (Esmeralda Ruspoli) would've rather had a boy, and Julius is raised accordingly. Seduced by the governess in her puberty, her confusion is absolute. On the eve of her wedding with Franco (Gianni Macchia), her own lack of identity causes her to flee. Julius is unable to establish genuine relationships. And thus she inexorably goes headlong into a huge disaster that will destroy her life once and for all. A gripping and shattering social study by director Tonino Valerii."

First 15 Minutes, in German:




The Nude Vampire
(1970, writ. & dir. Jean Rollin [3 Nov 1938 — 15 Dec 2010])

The Deuce points out: "The difference between grindhouse movies and arthouse movies can often be boiled down to how a film was marketed. Take for example Roger Vadim's And God Created Woman (1956 / trailer). To one audience it's an exotic continental melodrama, sophisticated and highbrow by virtue of it hailing from the country that gave us Jean Luc Godard and Coco Chanel. To another audience it's a teenage delinquent potboiler the highlight of which is getting to see Bridget Bardot's bare ass. [...] The Nude Vampire manages to achieve an almost perfect synthesis of art and exploitation and as such should tick boxes in both the arthouse and the grindhouse halves of the film fan brain."

Aka The Naked Vampire, La Vampire Nue is Jean Michel Rollin Roth Le Gentil's second feature-length film and the first one filmed in color. Rogue Cinema says "Jean Rollin is a little-known French horror film director who is an acquired taste, even for hardcore horror fans. While he directed his first feature back in 1968, only a handful of his films ever made it across the Atlantic, and then they were recut, retitled, badly dubbed, and thrown out on the video shelves for curious clientele to discover and mostly dismiss. [...]" In truth, in some cases the recut, retitled and badly dubbed version actually made into US cinemas, if only briefly, as is the case of La Vampire Nue, which Novak released upon an unsuspecting public in 1970.

As Fantastic Movie Musings and Ramblings points out: "The title somewhat redundant. This being a Jean Rollin film, I would actually be surprised if the vampire didn't turn up nude sooner or later. [...] Another aspect about this being a Rollin film is I find myself wanting to go back to three adjectives of Rollin; arty, erotic and gory. However, I'll throw out 'gory' in this case; in comparison to other movies I've seen, this one is relatively bloodless."

Scene from The Nude Vampire:

The Comic Book Bin opinions "Jean Rollin is known for his surreal imagery, poetic beauty, and attempts to insert various levels of pornography into every film, regardless of context. Sometimes it works, and sometimes it feels like a giant vulva floated across screen halfway through The Lion King (1994 / honest trailer). Thankfully, in The Nude Vampire, the dream-like imagery mixes well with the sexuality, creating an effective mood without feeling exploitative."

Unlike us in our R.I.P.: Career Review of Jean Rollin from 2010, Rogue Cinema offers a correct synopsis of the movie. "The story is about a rich man called Radamante and his cronies who have captured a young woman who drinks blood and is immortal. They keep her locked away from sunlight and human contact, only bringing her out to subject her to more cruel experiments and an occasional feeding. An entire suicide cult has grown up around this girl, and rich patrons who contribute towards the experiments meet on a regular basis. One of these patrons is randomly chosen to sacrifice him- or herself to the vampire so that the experiments on just how and why this girl is immortal can continue. Unfortunately for Radamante and the cult, his son, Pierre, accidentally runs into the girl and is smitten with her. Pierre soon discovers that his own father is connected with the girl, so he begins to question his father. As his investigation into the mysterious blood-sucking nymph brings him ever closer to unraveling Radamante's secret and exposing his bizarre experiments, Pierre's father must take drastic measures."

Among Rollin's many movies, to date only two have been reviewed here at A Wasted Life: Le Lac des Morts Vivants / Zombie Lake (1980) and La Rose de Fer / The Iron Rose (1973).

French Trailer to La Vampire Nue: 



The Notorious Cleopatra

(1970, dir. Peter Perry Jr. [as A.P. Stootsberry])

 "Cleopatra or not, you sure are a stacked bitch!"

Caesar (Jay Edwards)

Director Perry and scriptwriter Jim Macher teamed up again after the previous year's The Secret Sex Lives of Romeo and Juliet (see: H.H.N. Part VI) to bring you the inside skinny on Cleopatra. Novak's Boxoffice International distributed it as well as it could.

When it comes to this "trashy period piece", Johnny LaRue's Crane Shot says: "Despite the then-trendy breaking of the fourth wall a la Laugh-In (1967-73), it isn't as funny as Secret Sex Lives and turns uncomfortably serious at the end. Perry and [...] Harry Novak's production is cheap and could have used exterior shooting to allow fresh air to infiltrate the heavy breathing (the battle scenes occur entirely off-camera). However, the sets and costumes are decent for an inexpensive sex film, and Perry doesn't hesitate to move the camera or stage scenes theatrically to pump extra life into the, er, pumping. Loray White, who once was married to Sammy Davis Jr. for ten minutes, stars as Cleopatra using the pseudonym 'Sonora'. [...] Caesar, played by Jay Edwards as a fat, lazy, bored slob, sends his general, Marc Antony (Johnny Rocco), to bring him Cleopatra, the Queen of the Nile, so he can sleep with her. The logic of sending 'the greatest lover in all of Rome' after her seems a tad stupid, especially when Caesar warns Antony to keep his mitts off her. He doesn't, of course. In fact, he falls in love with Cleopatra, who begins scheming to replace Caesar on his throne. The thin story is padded by several extended sex scenes, including a couple of orgies. Or more accurately, Macher wrote a few dialogue scenes to tie the sex scenes together. [...] The acting, for the most part, is more professional than one might expect in sexploitation (the actors worked almost exclusively within the genre). The stacked Sonora/White is cast well and gets to show off her dancing prowess. Rocco's impossibly deep voice bursting through his perpetually clenched teeth is good for campy laughs. Of course, none of the actors bother hiding their 1960s hairstyles and sideburns."

Currently, the whole film seems to be available here at the infamous NSFW website Hamster.com.

The delectable "Sonora" / Loray White, a former dancer once married to Sammy Davis Jr., went on to do Herschell Gordon Lewis's Miss Nymphet's Zap-In (1970) and then disappeared. For the Thai poster of the movie seen below, her skin was whitened and face replaced by a more famous movie star.

Also Directed by Peter Perry Jr. (as Arthur P. Stootsberry) But Not for Novak —

The NSFW Trailer to David F. Friedman's Notorious Daughter of Fanny Hill:

Trailer till The Notorious Daughter of Fanny Hill från rstvideos trailerarkiv.

I Am Curious Tahiti
(1970, Carlos Tobalina)

We took a look at the filmmaker Carlos Tobalina (aka Troy Benny aka Bruce Van Buren aka Jeremiah Schlotter aka Efrain Tobalina) and his activities in R.I.P.: Harry Reems, Part VII (1986-2013), when we looked at the 1987 porno Pulsating Flesh, one of Harry Reems' later and less-interesting projects: "Born in 1925, Tobalina used to own, among others, the fabulous Mayan Theater in downtown LA (which is now a hip club); he died at the age of 63 in March, 1988, but during the seventeen years between 1969 (with the white-coater Infrasexum) and 1987 (Super Sex being his last porn movie) he cranked out a healthy amount of ineptly shot films, not to mention re-titled re-releases of anything that fell into his hands." Tobalina, a mostly forgotten director, is occasionally referred to as the "Ed Wood of Porn", as he usually evidenced little concern for the cinematic quality of the plethora of (mostly porn) films he made.

It seems only natural that a man like him should eventually do business with a man like Harry Novak — and indeed, they did, on this joint project and a number of others. Currently imdb has this movie here as one of their collaborations (and fails to list others), and although we could find no other evidence that this is a joint project, we present it here as possibly the first production collaboration between the two. Like most of their projects, I Am Curious Tahiti was produced by C. Tobalina Productions and distributed by Tobalina's Hollywood International Film Corporation of America (HIFCOA).
Needless to say, the title of I Am Curious Tahiti is an "homage" to the much more famous and culturally significant Swedish movie I Am Curious (Yellow) (1967) and its follow-up I Am Curious (Blue) (1968), which were actually filmed as one long film but released as two. Yellow has nudity and simulated sex and a scene in which the main character (Lena Nymann [23 May 1944 — 4 February 2011]) kisses her lover's flaccid weiner, all of which got the film banned in Massachusetts in 1969 for bring pornographic; it went to court and won.

Getting Naked in I Am Curious (Yellow):

Over at The NY Times, Dan Pavlides says the following about the soft-core movie I Am Curious Tahiti: "This uneven sex comedy finds Maria-Pia as the heroine and narrator of the film. The Russian female spy is sent from Los Angeles with orders to expose some western spies in Tahiti. With a high tech item that enables her to see and hear through walls, she listens in and watches couples in amorous pursuit. A drag queen tries to seduce another young man. A nun and a priest engage in pleasures of the flesh, and a girl and her uncle keep have an incestuous tryst. She comments on the erotic proceedings while the 1812 Overture highlights the orgasmic climaxes. Stock footage of Moscow and Switzerland are thrown in for padding along with a gay pride parade. The color process is not credited in this film plagued by poor audio recording."

Sweet Trash
(1970, writ. & dir. John Hayes)

Director Hayes (1 March 1930 — 21 August 2000) went on to do End of the World (1977 / see below), one of the many films Christopher Lee has gone onto trash as being a project he regrets taking part in. Sweet Trash has no such illustrious name to its cast to disparage the movie. Of special interest regarding the VHS cover to the film above: none of the stars credited actually appear in it, and one or two (like Luke Perry, for example) hadn't even begun their film careers yet when the film was made. 

The NY Times, like everyone (us included), reuses Robert Firsching's synopsis: "The [American Film Institute Catalog] of the 1960s incorrectly describes John Hayes'Sweet Trash as being about a dockworker lured into the loanshark racket. It actually concerns a nasty, homophobic cop named Bob Walsh, who rescues a foxy young girl named Angel from a massage parlor just before a raid. He lets her stay in his crummy apartment, and before too long they're having sex in the shower. But Angel is actually only 17, and it's all a set-up. Angel's pimp (who is first seen wearing clown makeup and has a hilltop mansion full of half-naked maids) is working for a rich, powerful man named Kelljan, who was caught in a vice raid by Bob and his partner (both in drag). He has Angel lure Bob to a hippie commune, where a girl rides naked on horseback and a guy with an eyepatch makes out with two women. As soon as Bob and Angel join the fun, the rest of the hipsters snap incriminating photos and Bob is in big trouble. Kelljan blackmails him, but the worst part for Bob is that he feels betrayed by Angel, whom he thought really loved him. He gets drunk and rapes her on an open window-ledge in retaliation, then sets about turning the tables on the pimp, even though he accidentally kills Angel in the process. She absolves him of any wrongdoing before she dies, telling him that she really loved him after all."

Has nothing to do with Novak, but John Hayes directed it —

End of the World (1977):

Fandango
(1970, writ & dir John Hayes)

Aka Mona's Place and Cowboy Brothel. As with John Hayes'Sweet Trash, we have our doubts that Harry Novak had his sticky fingers in the pie that is Fandango, but imdb, BFI and other sources list Novak as an un-credited producer — but then, the BFI also lists "Bradford Hallsworth" as a pseudonym of Novak's when it was one of David F. Friedman's.

The plot, according to TCM: "Dan Murphy (James Whitworth of The Hills Have Eyes [1977 / trailer] and the fiasco known as The Hills Have Eyes II [1984 / trailer], Planet of the Dinosaurs [1977 / see below] and Terminal Island [1973 / trailer]) leads a group of gold miners into the California mountains where they set up camp. The men are besieged by food shortage, bitter cold, and Muck Mulligan (Tony Vorno) and his gang of outlaws. In addition, the men are anxious for female companionship, so Murphy, along with Billy Busby (Jay Scott) and Sissy Sam (Marland Proctor of Curse of the Headless Horseman [1972 / trailer] and Wheeler aka Psycho from Texas [1975 / see further below]), visits the Fandango Saloon in a nearby town, where Murphy convinces his long-time friend, Mona DeLyse (Shawn Devereaux of The Seven Minutes [1971], seen below), to send some of her prostitutes to Murphy's camp. Meanwhile, Mulligan and his men are creating havoc in the town, and Murphy is injured in a gunfight with the gang. The next day Mona and three other women load their wagons and leave with the miners. During the journey, Sam's lover, Pauline (Donna Stanley), is attacked and raped by Mulligan's men. Upon arriving at the camp, the women satisfy the men's sexual needs and then prepare to return to the Fandango Saloon, but their caravan is again attacked by Mulligan. Murphy's miners come to their defence, and in the ensuing gunfight Billy is killed, and Murphy is injured. The women are captured and tortured by Mulligan, but Mona manages to shoot him. Later, Sam and Pauline are married, and Dan bids farewell to Mona, leaving her to her life of prostitution."

Not from Novak — Trailer to Planet of the Dinosaurs (1977),
with James Whitworth:

Over in NYC, lor thinks "[The] Madam of the local whorehouse is [...] played by ultra-busty Shawn Devereaux. I thought her natural-looking bazooms were worth the price of admission here, lovingly photographed by cinematographer Paul Hipp [...]. Picture suffers from its cheap sets, since OK outdoor footage (action scenes and shootouts) make it seem like a real movie at times. But once we get inside, the cheapo set dressing/decoration does not suggest the intended period atmosphere. Filmmaker John Hayes [...] doesn't seem engaged with this Western entry, which needed a far more interesting script to hold the audience. [...] No, Hayes and company shot low and hit their target — some topless footage of busty gals parading around as if a Western. Considering it was of 1970 vintage, absence of full-frontal nudity, beaver close-ups, etc., marks Fandango as a non-starter."

Not from Novak — Trailer to Psycho from Texas (1975),

 with Marland Proctor:

Love Me, Baby, Love Me!
(1970, dir. Michele Lupo)

Anna Moffo — Il Barbiere di Siviglia— Rossini (1967):

In Vol. 3 of Harry Novak's Boxoffice Bonanza of Sexploitation Trailers, one of three trailer compilations featuring — as the title indicates — trailers of Boxoffice releases, is the trailer to this Italian movie, "Una storia d'amore" (original title), which Novak brought stateside. Director Lupo generally specialized in Westerns, and towards the end of his career foisted a slew of crappy Bud Spensor flicks upon the world. Here, he attempted a serious drama, starring no one less than the Italian-American opera singer and television personality Anna Moffo (27 June 1932 — 9 March 2006) was an Italian-American opera singer, television personality, and award-winning dramatic actress, "one of the leading lyric-coloratura sopranos of her generation", "nicknamed 'La Bellissima'." Her only other film that we see of note (not to imply that we really find this film here noteworthy) is the satiric Edgar Wallace film homage, Weekend Murders (1970), also directed by Lupo.

Double Feature Trailer with Weekend Murders (1970):

Who knows how the movie fared with Novak's target group, but like so many movies Love Me, Baby! Love Me! has pretty much been forgotten over time. Our superficial search of the web only came up with two English-language commentaries on the movie, the first of which, found on Mr. Skin, owes more to Moffo's PG-13 nude scene than anything else: "Although Michele Lupo's Una Storia d’amore (1969) translates as 'A Story of Love,' the film was distributed abroad as Love Me, Baby, Love Me!, which better captures its playfully naughty essence. Anna Moffo plays Evy, a sexy mother of two who has all of her material needs taken care of. The trouble is that her jet-setting husband is rarely at home, leaving Evy to grow impatient about having to wait for her next lovemaking session. Enter Gianni Macchia — the young buck is happy to make himself useful to dear Evy by satisfying her on those long, lonely nights when her man is away. Moffo shows herself to be quite the enthusiastic participant in a trio of trips into lover boy's arms." There seems to be a blackmail plot and second woman involved, but we don't know the details. Eurotrash fans may remember Gianni Macchia from Emanuela around the World (1977 / trailer), Argento's Inferno (1980), and the underappreciated German flick, Blutiger Freitag (1970 / first 6 minutes).

Trailer to Inferno (1980),:

Over in France, someone at French Films saw Una storia d'amore and was less than impressed: "Produced by Maurizio Amati [who also produced Leviathan(1989), Cannibal Apocalypse (1980 / trailer) and Holocaust 2000 (1977 / Arabian trailer)] and distributed by Cinema Epoch. Our overall rating for Una storia d'amore is: very poor, a disaster of a film that is probably less salvageable than the Titanic — a seriously bad film to be avoided like the plague."

 

Booby Trap
(1970, dir. Dwayne Avery)
 
Trailer to Booby Trap:

Harry Novak proudly presented Booby Trap— a.k.a. Young and Wild (not to be confused with the 1961 potboiler Young and Wild aka Naked Youth [full movie]), 10 Seconds to Murder, and (the 1975 X-rated version featuring the edited-in wieners of John Holmes and Marc Valentine [as Marcus Valentino]) Love Explosions. Director Avery wrote the script with Art Hedberg (who plays "Frankie Collins" in the movie); as far as we can tell, Hedberg went on to script the G-rated Never Look Back (1973) and then disappeared.

Strip Scene from Booby Trap:

Digital Retribution says: "Booby Trap has possibly the greatest premise for any film ever. Ex-Marine sergeant Jack Brannan (Carl Monson) [...] really hates teenagers. Really, really hates 'em. Matter of fact, he hates 'em so much he buys 40 claymore anti-personnel mines from an army buddy so that he can sow the ground of a Woodstock-lite festival with 'em and blow those hippies to kingdom come. [...] Turns out ol' Jack had a bit of a checkered past with the military (surprise, surprise), and he's being hotly sought after in his mobile home, as the taunting letters he's been sending his ex-commanding officer have led folks to believe that he's probably up to no good. Send in the astonishingly coiffured army detective Cliff Shepherd to investigate! At the same time, Jack's picked up a hitch-hiking hippie-chick, Gloria, presumably to remind him (and us) as to why he hates those counter-culture Leary-lovin' LSD freaks. Doesn't stop him from doing the hippity-dippity with her, though. Doesn't stop him blowing her up with a claymore after he's done, either. [...] The plot (yes, there is one) takes a bit of a detour here via a burlesque dancin' house, where a few more elements (and quite a few boobs) are introduced, including Jack's ex-wife (now a cocktail waitress), the mob (one of whom is distractingly short), a guitarist, Rudy (Christopher Geoffries of Godchildren [1971 / man tortures woman], The Devil & Leroy Bassett [1973 / full movie] and Teen-Age Jail Bait [1973 / scene]), who's currently knocking boots with Taffy (Angela Carnon of The Boob Tube Strikes Again! [1977 / radio add] and Video Vixens! [1975]), and the predatory homosexual, Frankie the Faggot (Art Hedberg), who wants to pop Rudy's cherry."

Trailer to Video Vixens! (1975):

Trailer till Video Vixens från rstvideos trailerarkiv.

Digital Retribution views Booby Trap as "pure gold in cheese form", but Critical Condition is, well, more critical: "Be prepared to be underwhelmed. This is a slow-moving and rather boring film that tries to perk-up viewer interest by including a sex scene every fifteen minutes or so, but it looks to me that those sex scenes were severely edited to achieve an R-Rating [...]. The screenplay [...] is far too ambitious for the film's meager budget, as the explosions are few and far between (only four total), the acting poor and the dialogue is full of flubbed and stepped-on lines. You can tell this film was made during the early 70s (besides the obvious wardrobe and hairstyles) because the film's sole gay character, Frankie Collins (Pepe Russo), is portrayed as a lying thief who gets the crap beat out of him and called 'faggot' by Scarpo every chance he gets. This film is so cheap that when a car explodes, it does so off-screen. [...] Avoid it at all costs."

Title song sung by forgotten singer Jeri Lynn — one wonders whatever happened to her. Was she the same Jeri Lynn who sang the rockabilly song below?

Not from the Movie — Jeri Lynn sings If:

Sandra, Making of a Woman
(1970, dir. Gary Graver [20 July 1938 — 16 Nov 2006])
 

Although we know that Novak did indeed work with Gary Garver, and though we wouldn't be surprised if they worked together on more films than we know of, we still have our doubts that Harry Novak had his sticky fingers in the pie that is Sandra, Making of a Woman, primarily because the only place that even says that Novak was involved is the an online magazine called Funhouse. But what the fudge, for the benefit of the doubt, let's take a closer look at this slab of sleaze.

Gary Garver himself (aka Robert McCulum, Robert McCallun, Robert Mc Callum, Robert Mccullam, Robert Mccullum and June Moon) we looked at briefly in both in Part V of our R.I.P. Career Review of Harry Reems as well as that of Paul Hunt. Prior to his death from cancer on our birthday in 2006, the man had a long and illustrious career as a cinematographer and director and writer and actor and producer and worked for people ranging from Novak to Roger Corman to Orson Welles to Ron Howard to Al Adamson (he was "director of photography" on the unforgettable Dracula Vs Frankenstein [1971]) to Speilberg. It is estimated that aside from his "respectable" (or semi-respectable) projects, he may have worked on more than 135 adult movies, which naturally explains why he was eventually inducted into the AVN Hall of Fame for his life work. (Critical Condition has a nice profile of the man's work here.)

Over at imdb, weinerm of Boston says that "Basically this movie is an excuse to see Monica Gayle in various stages of undress", but at Steven Puchalski of the great and forever entertaining Shock Cinema Magazine sees a bit more in this "surprisingly-energetic, coming-of-age sexploitation" movie: "Although loaded with the requisite sexcapades, you get the feeling that director/editor/photographer Graver was also striving for a modicum of cut-rate reality, while his high-octane cinematic savvy graces the most generic horseshit with radical energy and imagination. Best of all, this sexplosion has Monica Gayle baring it all in the title role, several years before popping up as 'Patch' in Jack Hill's seminal Switchblade Sisters (1975 / trailer). For this early gig, she [...] plays a 19-year-old rural babe who gets fed-up with her emotional wreck of a Dad who slaps her around and guzzles cheap hooch by the glassful. Tossing her virginity away to some local pinhead (who instantly wants to marry her), she then hitches her way to San Francisco, with the aid of a fetishistic lingerie salesman. On her own for the first time, a biker feels her up in a movie theatre, she's hit on by her lesbian landlord, and she gets a job as a horny psychiatrist's receptionist. Of course, since Sandra craves sex as badly as they do, it all works out fine... It's usually a waste of time to mention acting when it comes to early sex-pics, but in this instance, Gayle is actually good as the down-trodden country gal, who dumps her repressed home town in order to 'find herself' in the Big City. Don't confuse this with some type of feminist tract though, because most of the time Sandra is flat on her back, with some nameless dick inside of her. [...] The script also gets points for not viewing Sandra as a slutty nympho. Instead, she's just an average girl learning to enjoy life and love (while all the local guys queue up around her bed). But its Graver's style-to-burn which makes this film a treat. [...] This is a prime example of a talented filmmaker doing his damnedest to turn a sow's ear into a slightly more artistic sow's ear. Happily, he succeeded."

Monica Gayle in Switchblade Sisters (1975) — Trailer:

Overdose of Degradation 
(1970, dir. Jerry Abrams [as Gerald Grayson])

 

We personally have major doubts that Harry Novak had his sticky fingers in the sphincter that is Overdose of Degradation, particularly since, according to TCM, this is a Distribpix flick — something their website currently does not confirm — but since the unreliable online magazine called Funhouse says it is a Novak production we'll give this misogynist male fantasy the benefit of the doubt and take a closer look at it.

Aka Degradation, it was co-scripted by Zachary Strong (that's a picture of him at the left), a man often credited as one of the early pioneers of anal sex feature films with such backdoor-fixated flicks as his More Ways than One (1975) and Analyst (1975), the latter of which was actually directed by Jerry Abrams, the director and co-scriptwriter of Overdose of Degradation. Abrams and Strong seemed to work often together; Jerry Abrams (that's a picture of him here to the right) later went on, like his bud Zachary Strong, to direct porn films and, occasionally, to even appear in non-sex role — in the classic Resurrection of Eve [1973], for example, in which Strong, on the other hand, was a bit more active.

Credit Sequence to Resurrection of Eve (1973):
Resurrection of Eve 1973 (Purple Skies & Butterflies) from ddaa on Vimeo.

Despite how square Mr. Jerry Abrams may look, in the 1960s in the hippie-Mecca of San Francisco he is an early pioneer of lightshows at concerts and was successful enough to get prominent billing on the posters shared with groups like the Steve Miller Band ["Quicksilver Girl"], The Youngbloods ["Stagger Lee"], Quicksilver Messenger Service ["Gold and Silver"], It's a Beautiful Day ["Hot Summer Day"], Canned Heat ["On the Road Again"], Tim Buckley ["Song to the Siren"], Steppenwolf ["The Pusher"] and the Velvet Underground ["Stephanie Says"]. His light shows were the source of inspiration for his early shorts like Be-In (1967) or Eyetoon (1968).

Jerry Abrams' Short Be-In (1967), with music by Blue Cheer:

Over at imdb, one of the few people have seen the film, XXX-man, dismisses the film as an "overdose of Nonsense", saying "It's all fairly weird and tasteless — and really nothing special, all things considered. But the narration is entertainingly off the wall. At one point, [the main character] Jennifer (Anna Travers) tells us that she still likes to come to the park, despite having been raped there, because (quote from memory) 'girls get raped all over; actually, they get raped in the same place, just in different locations.' I couldn't make this stuff up if I tried."

Over at One Sheet, the exhibitor's teaser was as follows: "Hi ... I'm Jenny... and I've had an Overdose of Degradation... I live to love... everybody — I love my girlfriends, my boyfriends... and anything else I can get my hands on. Did you ever sit quietly in the park and listen to the rocks ball? ... Well I do... my middle name is sex and everything I see and do turns me on ... I'd love to turn you on Mr. Exhibitor — at least share me with your friends and customers ... they'll LOVE you for it. In case you haven't guessed it, I'm the star of Overdose of Degradation, a movie I especially liked to make — because it shows the real me. It's loaded with sex-action, tenderness and violence — and in just the right doses — filmed to create an overdose of ticket sales for you."

Women in Prison Films was impressed by what they saw: "How 'bout this: While at the park, Jenny has a flashback of being molested as a child. She then has a flashback of a man biting her, and has fantasies about a girl and eating the bathroom counter. Then, still at the park, she has a flashback of being raped. This scene seems to go on and on as she helplessly cries and the editor flashes to shots of rocks and streams (did I mention the flashbacks?). A friend finds Jenny unconscious. She takes Jenny home and molests her. Jenny, still unconscious, has flashbacks of flashbacks, while having a flashback. Jenny regains consciousness, beats her friend with a stick, then goes into the kitchen and cooks some eggs. The end."

Jerry Abrams'Short Eyetoon (1968):
SUNDAY SHORTS #22: Eyetoon from MONOLITH MAGAZINE on Vimeo.

Getting into Heaven
(1970, writ. & dir. Edward L. Montoro)

 "Is Heaven a Place or a Woman?"

Dunno to what extent Novak had anything to do with this flick when it came out in 1970, but it was on a two-film "Harry Novak Presents" DVD released by Something Weird (complementing Angels [1976], which is proven to have been Novak production) — and it stars Uschi Digard (as the titular Heaven), so how could we not take a closer look at it?

NSFW Trailer to Getting into Heaven:

As far as we can tell, this is one of only two movies that Edward L. Montoro ever directed (the other being The Loser aka Platinum Pussycat aka The Pink Pussycat [1968 / trailer]). But as a film producer and distributor of eurotrash via his firm Film Ventures International (FVI), he stood in the shadows for many a classic, remembered and forgotten, including: William Girdler's Grizzly (1976 / German trailer) and Day of the Animals (1977 / trailer— with Leslie Nielson), Stridulum (1979 / trailer), Juan Piquer Simón's Pieces (1982 / trailer) and Los nuevos extraterrestres (1983 / theme), Beyond the Door (1974 / trailer), Don't Go in the House (1979 / trailer), Anthropophagus (1980 / trailer), The Dark (1979 / trailer) and more, more, more.

Montoro's luck as a successful distributor and producer began to go sour in 1981 when he picked the Italo Jaws (1975 / trailer) rip-off The Last Jaws (1981 / trailer) and eventually lost a court case against Universal; this was followed by a few less than successful releases like Mortuary (1983 / trailer), The House on Sorority Row (1983 / trailer) and the unjustly ignored Night Shadows / Mutant (1984). Finally, following a messy divorce with his wife Joan and illness and a long stay at the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, Edward L. Montoro emptied Film Ventures International's accounts of a couple of million dollars and, much like DB Cooper, was never seen again. (A loss, perhaps for the world of B & C & D films, but surely an improvement of his life.)

Trailer to Night Shadows / Mutant (1984):

But to get to Getting into Heaven, Trash Film Guru gushes:"Ah, Uschi. [...] Admittedly, a good number of the flicks she appeared in were pretty dismal, but she could liven up even the most listless celluloid atrocity by just showing up on screen and taking her clothes off. Okay, her Swedish accent, when left un-doctored, was so thick as to be impenetrable, but who really cares? [...] And let's be honest — it's not like every film she was in was terrible. [...] Case in point: old-hand nudie director Edward L. Montoro’s 1970 steamy low-budgeter Getting Into Heaven. I'm not here to tell you it's some lost classic or anything of the sort, but it is a fun, never-dull slice of skinema that stands apart from other productions of its ilk for, at the very least, being a consistently engaging production that all the principals involved in at least appear to be trying to make as good as it could possibly be. [...] Beyond that there's not a great deal more one needs to know by way of specifics, apart from the fact that every woman in this movie is darn easy on the eyes and more than willing to disrobe at the drop of the hat and stay that way for a good few minutes. [...] The 'humor' is all groaningly obvious and more than a touch misogynistic, but [...] there's nothing blatantly anti-female enough going on to rise to the level where it would genuinely bother your conscience."

Lastly, One Sheet Index has the plot: "Heaven (Uschi Digard), Sin (Jennie Lynn) and Karen (Phyllis Stengel) are three wild Hollywood models who want to break into the movies more than anything. Their only hope is a dirty old man, Mr. Salacity (Miles White), producer of films. Salacity has no interest in using the girls except for his own private pleasure. The trio tries every trick in their bag in attempt after attempt to convince Salacity that they are talented ... at everything! A picnic in a secluded grove gives Heaven and Sin their best chance to 'persuade' Salacity to hire them. But as much as he enjoys himself, their efforts to become starlets are in vain. Along the way, Heaven gets turned on to Sin with sensual, then hilarious results. As Heaven's boyfriend, Bernie (Scott Cameron), has just about convinced her to marry him and forget the movies, she gets one last wild idea that she feels Salacity cannot resist. In a last final attack the three girls attempt to exhaust Salacity, who has been kidnapped and held prisoner in their bedroom, into submission and a job. However, this marathon 'love-in' has just the opposite effect on Salacity and long after all three girls are totally drained he is still ready and willing. Just as Heaven is agreeing to marry Bernie, Salacity has a brainstorm and decides to hire all three girls to star in his new film.

Part of Another NSFW Trailer to Getting into Heaven:

Gettin Into Heavenvon bmoviesheroes2

Ann & Eve
(1970, dir. Arne Mattsson)

 
Trailer to Ann & Eve:

A couple of online sources claim that Novak / Boxoffice International was involved with the US release of this movie, including John Harrison, who says "From the vaults of Harry Novak, and filled to the brim with sixties Euro fashions, sports cars, and futuristic architecture [...] Ann and Eve ends up being the cinematic equivalent of all those naughty magazines we all used to keep safely hidden under the mattress as a kid..."

Original title: Ann och Eve - de erotiska— as if the presence of Marie Liljedahl (of Sarno's Inga [1968 / opening credits], Rolf Thiele's Grimm's Fairy Tales for Adults [1969 / full film], Jess Franco's Eugenie [1970 / trailer] and Massimo Dallamano's The Picture of Dorian Gray [1970 / trailer]), seen here below not from the film, wasn't enough, the trailer above sure makes it look like a winner.

Swedish director Arne Mattsson (2 December 1919 — 28 June 1995) began directing films in the 40s. In 1951 he won the Golden Bear in Berlin for the scandal film One Summer of Happiness (1951 / trailer), which was also nominated at Cannes for the Grand Prize, and his equally contentious 1953 movie Bread of Love was likewise successful. Throughout the 50s and 60s he specialized in thrillers ala Hitchcock, for which he is occasionally lauded as a precursor of Italo giallo films, and as of the 70s moved onto less-respected films.

The director and this film here are looked at closely over at Cinezilla, which begins its article with the blunt assertion "Arne Mattsson, in my opinion, [is] one of the finest directors ever to have come out of Sweden" and goes on to later say "if you are into mind-expanding movies with soft bossanova scores, hot chicks and a somewhat confusing plot, then this is definitely something that you have to check out."

Miss Meyer at Lydiaargh Grace, however, was less impressed: "Duped into watching this by believing there was a lot more to it than there actually was, Swedish flick Ann and Eve is less your standard softcore romp and more a boring, somewhat bizarre narrative that includes the odd bit of bonking and a satirical comment on film journalism. Marie Liljedahl is Eve, young and soon to be married. Before she marries her childhood sweetheart, she accompanies Ann (Gio Petre of Mac Ahlberg's Fanny Hill [1968 / Swedish trailer] and I, A Woman Part II [1968]), a bitchy lesbian journalist, on a holiday to Greece where she is encouraged and persuaded to have an affair. And, after much protest, she eventually gives in, bedding a large number of men and women in disappointing off camera scenes or highly stylized out of focus shots (as in literally not seeing anything). Add to that disjointed scenes with a Greek singer (Olivera Katarina of Mark of the Devil [1970 / trailer below]) which feel completely out-of-place, a confusing did she/didn't she murder plot and a weak attempt at a scathing jab at the role of film critics in the filmmaking world and you have one extremely dull movie."

Trailer to Mark of the Devil (1970):

Over at imdb, however, Stefan Nylen's (red@defekt.cinemacabre.se) one-line plot synopsis makes Ann & Eve sound like a must-see: "An erotic drama about a youthful bride-to-be who takes a holiday to Yugoslavia with a cynical and evil lesbian film critic (and murderess) that leads to debauchery, degradation with a dwarf, a dinner with naked entertainers and other highlights..."

Country Cuzzins
(1970, writ & dir Bethel Buckalew)

As far as we can tell, this is the first time that Harry Novak, producer and distributor, worked with Rene Bond, who went on to become one of the legendary and most popular adult film actresses of the early Golden Age of (West Coast) Porn. That's her below, still all natural, from the film.

Over at Mondo Digital, Novak said the following about how he helped her rise the ladder of success: "My production guy probably brought her [Rene Bond] in. She had a boyfriend at the time [Ric Lutze], and she had him perform with her in that picture. [...] She also played in our country pictures, and in the first one she had no boobs. Somewhere along the line she needed them to keep getting work, so my partner and I extended some money for her to get some boobs. She worked it off though and did several shows for us."

But now, a quick note about Bethel Buckalew: no, his name was not a pseudonym used by the productive filmmaker and "pioneer of the sexploitation genre" Peter "Pete" Perry, Jr. Buckalew was a real person and a real multi-tasker of a filmmaker and it does the long-since-vanished man a disservice to continue to wrongly assert that he wasn't really there at all. Peter "Pete" Perry, Jr. went on the record to Temple of Schlock and insisted, [Bethel Buckalew] is a real person. I used to use him in the early years as my production manager, but then he went off on his own and did those other things." A commentator at ToS goes onto say "Public records indicate that he [Bethel] divorced Marlene Buckalew [...] in 1980", by which time he seems to have already left the film business. (As far as we can find out on the web, Marlene Buckalew currently lives in Escondido, CA — she's in the book — while Bethel Buckalew (born 1929), was once in Aberdeen, MD.)

In any event, as the title infers, this flick is pure hixploitation, a genre that Bethel Buckalew specialized in. The plot, from the Last Drive-In on the Left, which calls the flick "a funny sexploitation flick": "Come and join in this Barnyard Blast and see what happens when Country Hicks meet City Chicks. [...] Grandma Peabody (Zena Foster of The Corpse Grinders [1971 / trailer below]) gathers the clan together for a ho-down reunion before she kicks the bucket. This family reunion even includes Cousin Prudence (Ellen Stephens), their rich relative from the city. At first Prudence is too uppity to get down and dirty with the clan, but after a slug of some home-made moonshine, she lets her hair hang down and she joins in the fun. It's not long before Prudence is winning the chicken-chasing contest as the family makes her feel right at home. In a drunk stupor Prudence invites the hillbilly gang for a party at her home in L.A. When Prudence arrives back home she cannot believe that she actually invited them. Along with her snotty friend, they decide to make the most of it and decide to have all of their guests dress up like hillbillies. Soon after the clan arrives. Suddenly everyone is getting naked and joining in the festivities. Her rich snotty friends begin dancing to country music and begin playing 'Look and Touch' like they were raised in a barn."

Trailer to The Corpse Grinders (1971):

Girls Guns and Ghouls calls the movie "a virtually plotless film" but likes it: "Buckalew's fashioned a fun little exercise here, and it's enjoyable to just let it wash over you and not expect much more. As you can probably tell, not a whole lot happens, plot-wise, other than copulation in Country Cuzzins! The sex on show is slightly more explicit than in some of the nudie-cuties and sexploitation covered in these pages from the sixties and early seventies, but not by much. We do get to see full-frontal nudity from both sexes, and the sex between Leroy (John Tull, the future assistant director of The Witch Who Came from the Sea [1976 / trailer] and Drive In Massacre [1976 / trailer]) and his 'virgin' gets quite intense. Rene's scene with 'Buck' Flower is ridiculous, and Flower makes my flesh crawl with his groping and ranting, but you can tell Bond is a sex star in the making — she's into bringing the scene across. Cuzzins has an enjoyable, twangy country score with most of the songs devoted to Billy-Jo (Rene Bond). It's not incredibly well-made or anything, but there is a kind of charm in there [...]. Country Cuzzins is worth a look on a number of fronts. You get to see Rene Bond in action, see some hillbilly silliness done reasonably well, listen to some fine old country music and learn about the wonderful pastimes of chicken-chasing and 'look and touch'. I don't know how to sell the film more than that!"

Trailer to Country Cuzzins:

To be continued... one day.

Misc. NSFW Film Fun — Dirty Poole: Overture

September 13, 2014, 5:29 am

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Podcast with Wakefield Poole at The Rialto Report.

And in case you don't know who he is, Wikipedia explains: Wakefield Poole (born Walter Wakefield Poole III in Jacksonville, Florida in 1936), is an American dancer, choreographer, theatrical director, and pioneering film director in the gay pornography industry from the 1970s and 1980s.

Poole joined the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo in 1957 and later became a dancer, choreographer, and director on television and Broadway. From 1964 to 1968, Poole was married to Nancy Van Rijn, a Broadway performer and choreographer. In the late 1960s, Poole and his lover Peter Schneckenburger (later known as Peter Fisk, star of Boys in the Sand) began experimenting with film and multimedia shows, culminating in a multimedia gallery show for Broadway poster artist David Edward Byrd at the Triton Gallery in New York. Poole made his directorial film debut with Boys in the Sand (1971). He and Boys in the Sand producer Marvin Shulman made another film the following year entitled Bijou, starring Bill Harrison. Poole and Shulman then attempted to make a crossover film, Wakefield Poole's Bible (1974), a trio of Old Testament stories focusing on female Biblical figures and starring Georgina Spelvin as a comic Bathsheba. The film was unsuccessful with audiences, though well received by the few critics who saw it. A number of Poole's films starred Casey Donovan, one of the best known porn stars of his time.

Trailer to Wakefield Poole's Bible (1974): 

Trailer for "Wakefield Poole's Bible" from Gorilla Factory Productions on Vimeo.

R.I.P.: Joachim "Blacky" Fuchsberger

September 13, 2014, 5:29 am

≫ Next: Zombi II / Zombie (Italy, 1979)

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11 March 1927 – 11 September 2014

The German-Australian actor seen in numerous fun Edgar Wallace movies and krimis and more. He always got the girl. In the English-speaking world, he was sometimes credited as Akim Berg or Berger.

A look at his films is to come.

Zombi II / Zombie (Italy, 1979)

September 18, 2014, 2:19 am

≫ Next: R.I.P.: Harry H.. Novak, Part VIII: 1971

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Way back when this film came out, we were but a wee pubescent white lad bussed daily to a predominantly black school in Beautiful Virginia is for Lovers; all the black guys saw it and couldn't talk about anything else, leaving us honkies envious: there was no way in hell we could talk our parents into allowing us to even see the movie, much less into taking us to the neighborhoods where it was being shown — Grindhouseville — and, well, we didn't have the gonads to go to those places alone. And thus we missed another gore classic of yesteryear...

 

Back then, needless to say, we knew not that the flick was dubbed Italo trash, and the name Lulci Fulci meant nothing to us. The movie was, of course, riding on the success of George Romero's Dawn of the Dead (1978 / German trailer). Romero's movie was a co-production with the Italo master Dario Argento, and Argento's cut of the film was released in Europe as Zombi; just like Romero's version in the US, it was a huge hit. Thus it was natural that the Eurotrash rip-off factory known as Italy quickly began regurgitating their own shambling, flesh-eating zombie flicks, and one of the first (if not the first) was this one, released as Zombi II and sold in Europe as a sequel despite having absolutely nothing to do with the original Romero movie. (It is claimed that the movie was actually in production prior to Dawn of the Dead, with the opening and closing scenes added to tie it into Romero's series after the success of his movie, and while that could possible, the plot is too linear to convincingly suggest that the opening and closing scenes were added later. In any event, though not a Romero film, going by the narrative and the final scene, the movie could well be viewed as a kind of "Evening of the Living Dead" preceding the original and seminal Night of the Living Dead [1968].)

Zombi II not only reinvented Fulci's then-flagging directorial career, but was followed by a partially Fulci-directed* sequel, Zombi 3 aka Zombie 2: Flesheaters (1988 / trailer), a semi-official sequel, Zombie 4: After Death (1989 / trailer, with mammoth-meated Jeff Stryker in a rare non-porn role), the non-official Joe D'Amato "sequels"Zombie 5: Killing Birds  (1988 / trailer) and Zombie 6: Monster Hunter (1981)**, and dozens of Euro-imitations — such as Zombi Holocaust (1980), for example — thus creating an enduring Italo genre.

The plot of Zombi II can essentially be honed down to that of how a young woman, (Tisa Farrow of Some Call It Loving [1973, starring Zalman King], Fingers [1978 / trailer], and Anthropophagus [1980 / trailer]), assisted by a manly man (Ian McCulloch of It! [1966 / trailer] and Contamination [1980 / trailer]) goes to search for her missing father but finds an island full of gut-munching walking dead instead. Everyone else involved in the story — two boating vacationers (Al Cliver aka Pier Luigi Conti of Jesús Franco's White Cannibal Queen [1980, with Lina Romay / German trailer] and The Devil Hunter aka Jungfrau unter Kannibalen [1980 / German trailer], The Black Cat [1981 / trailer], 2020 Texas Gladiators [1982 / trailer], Endgame - Bronx lotta finale [1983 / trailer] and Demonia [1990] and Auretta Gay), the Doctor (Richard Johnson of The Haunting [1963 / trailer], The Witch [1966 / full movie], Deadlier Than the Male [1967 / trailer], What Waits Below [1985 / trailer], The Comeback [1978 / trailer], The Night Child [1975 / trailer], Big Alligator River [1979 / trailer] and Monster Club [1981]) and his histrionic wife (Olga Karlatos of Damned in Venice [1978], Keoma [1976 / trailer], Murderock [1984 / music]) and nurse (Stefania D'Amario of Nightmare City [1980], The Sister of Ursula [1978 / trailer], Le deportate della sezione speciale SS aka Deported Women of the SS Special Section [1976 / trailer]) and groundskeeper (Dakar of Perry Rhodan — SOS aus dem Weltall [1967 / soundtrack], Zombi Holocaust [1980], and Ator the Invincible [1982 / trailer]) and others of lesser screen time are there to flesh out the thin plot, supply mouthwatering female nudity, and become zombie fodder.

Yes, the plot is thin, but Fulci does a lot with it and, truth be told, time has been extremely kind to Zombi II— possibly even more so than with Romero's original Dawn of the Dead, which suffers from inconsistent zombie activity (slow [most] vs. fast [the two children zombies]; thinking [zombie pretending to be a store manikin] vs. unthinking [zombie with gun]), crappy purple zombie make-up, and uneven pacing. (None of these flaws pop up in Zombi II, but others do.) Though obviously made with a lower budget than Dawn, Zombi II is far more enthusiastic in its openly exploitive embracement of gratuitous nudity (a wonderful diving scene with Auretta Gay and a disturbing shower scene with Olga Karlatos***), while the gore is just as excessive if much more cheap-looking. The zombies are also often much more frightening, particularly when, after digging themselves out of a grave, maggots and worms fall from their facial orifices.

Clearly, Zombi II is not a message film. It is a gore horror exploiter in which the story and acting are of less importance than the visceral and shock, and thus the characters are one-note and often — particularly in the case of Farrow's stiff Anne Bowles**** — poorly acted, and there are also glaring cases of sloppy filmmaking, like when the same scene of an exploding Molotov is re-shown after every Molotov thrown or when the zombie fighting the shark loses, has, and then again loses his arm (in a nevertheless amazing scene). Likewise, certain actions of the various characters defy logic, such as how Brian (Al Cliver) wrecks the car by swerving not to run over a zombie; how Susan Barrett (Auretta Gay), instead of hightailing, just stands there and stares when the Spanish zombie rises out of the earth; and how the good doctor, though knowing that you gotta shoot 'em in the head, never shares the info — or, for that matter, the group never figure it out themselves despite all the prior run-ins with zombies that only ended because they destroyed the head.

The explanation for the sudden reanimation of the zombies is also less than satisfying, an obvious expedient made simply to have some explanation for their presence. As one of the alternative titles (Voodoo) implies, Voodoo is bringing the dead back. But nowhere is it every truly explained why Voodoo worshippers — or, as the doc infers, some "evil witch doctor"— would even want to do so, particularly since the dead coming back are not controllable, mindless workers but virtually unstoppable eating machines that are, basically, leading to the total destruction of mankind. In this regard, the virus theory usually expounded in far more satisfying (and much less pro-Colonialist).

But for these and other flaws, Zombi II remains an intense and gripping horror movie. Fulci has a creative eye and tight style, and his occasionally creative camera work is never boring and almost always effective. From the first scene of the unmanned boat on the Hudson to the final scenes of (1) our final survivors alone on a boat with a zombified Brian banging against the cabin door and (2) zombies shuffling across the Brooklyn Bridge, Fulci keeps the pacing logical and the narrative coherent, interesting and — particularly once the group sets sail for the island — tense and suspenseful, if not harrowing. There is more to this film than just the gore and gratuitous nudity: there are a number of creepy if not horrific scenes as well as a depressingly sense of unavoidable doom — an unavoidable doom that is underscored by the movie's open and unpromising ending. 

Yes, Zombi II is exploitation trash; but damn, for what it is, it is surprisingly effective — and far more coherent than most of Fulci's later "classics" like The Beyond (1981 / trailer), City of the Living Dead (1980) or House by the Cemetery (1981 / trailer). If you haven't seen Zombi II yet, give it a go: you probably won't regret it. We sure didn't.

* Fulci bowed out midway and was replaced by the Italian Ed Wood Jr., Bruno Mattei, himself a recognized master of entertainingly shitty Italo zombie flicks (see: Island of the Living Dead [2006]).

** Both actually being old D'Amato productions the sleazemeister re-released as sequels so as to earn an extra buck; the first being Killing Birds (1987) and the second Absurd (1981 / trailer). 

*** Both gratuitous interludes end with some of Zombi II's more infamous scenes: Gay's topless swim with the zombie versus shark scene, Karlatos's with the notorious and nerve-wracking wooden splinter in the eye scene. Also, as beautiful and fit as Karlatos is nude, the voyeuristic scene is both uncomfortable and disturbing, particularly once it is made clear — via a rotting hand that moves into the p.o.v. to scratch at the window — that the voyeur is a zombie out for vitals, not nubiles. 

**** One did not lose a great actress when she decided to give up the limelight for nursing.

GIF above thanks to The Mojoverse.

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R.I.P.: Harry H.. Novak, Part VIII: 1971

September 24, 2014, 4:50 am

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12 January 1928 — 26 March 2014

"When I was a kid, my Daddy told me, 'There's a buyer for everything.' And I lived to find out that he was right."
Harry H. Novak

Harry H. Novak, alongside David F Friedman (24 December 1923 — 14 February 2011) one of the great (s)exploitation kings of the last half of the 20th century, died 26 March 2014 at the age of 86.

A detailed career review of all the projects Harry H. Novak foisted upon the American public would be Sisyphean task at best and hardly possible, as no full and unequivocal list exists. What follows is a review of the films that we found that, for the most part, probably had Novak's involved somewhere along the way — and some that may not have. It is definitely not a complete list, and definitely not infallible, it is merely culled from sources reliable and unreliable that we found online. We also in no way suggest that the given release dates are the correct ones, they are merely the first ones we found.

If you know any we missed, feel free to send the title...

Go here for Part I

Go here for Part II: 1956-64

Go here for Part III: 1965-66

Go here for Part IV: 1967 

Go here for Part V: 1968

Go here forPart VI: 1969

Go here for Part VII: 1970

 

When Men Carried Clubs and Women Played Ding-Dong
(1971, dir. Bruno Corbucci)
 

Original title: Quando gli uomini armarono la clava e... con le donne fecero din-don. Another foreign film Novak picked up to distribute, this time from Italy. Director Bruno Corbucci (23 October 1931 — 7 September 1996) was the younger brother of Sergio Corbucci (6 December 1926 — 1 December 1990), with whom he co-wrote the elder brother's masterpiece Westerns, Django (1966) and The Great Silence(1968), among many films. For this movie here, he shared the writing credits with Fabio Pittorru (who also worked on The Night Evelyn Came Out of the Grave [1971 / trailer below] and The Red Queen Kills 7 Times [1972 / trailer]) and Massimo Felisatti (who also worked on The Night Evelyn Came Out of the Grave [1971 / trailer below] and Strip Nude for Your Killer [1975 / trailer]).

Italian Trailer to The Night Evelyn Came Out of the Grave (1971):

The plot to Quando gli uomini armarono la clava e... con le donne fecero din-don is an update of an ancient Greek play, Aristophanes'Lysistrata, set in caveman times (an obvious reference to the movie's source material is given in the Italian version in the name of the character Lisistrata [Nadia Cassini, of Starcrash (1978 / trailer), Il dio serpente (1970 / soundtrack) and Io zombo, tu zombi, lei zomba (1979 / trailer)], changed to Listra in the foreign versions).

To loosely translate the plot description at the German website Zelluliod: "An exciting tournament is held between the Cave People and the Water People, the main prize of which is the well-built Listra. Soon, only the respective tribal heads are fighting for the super-broad, until the smooth Ari (Antonio Sabato of Barbarella [1968 / trailer], War of the Robots [1978 / a trailer] and Seven Blood-Stained Orchids [1971 / trailer below]), leader of the Cave People, finally wins her. But Grev (Aldo Giuffrè), the chief of the Water People, wants revenge. As the fighting continues, the women of both tribes begin a sex strike."

Trailer to Seven Blood-Stained Orchids (1971):

Rare Cult Cinema says: "This is a pretty bad 70's caveman spoof based on the Raquel Welch classic One Million Years BC (1966 / trailer). But still, there are enough obscure things in it to make it watchable. In this weird film you learn that ladies in the Stone Age were actually sex maniacs who loved to dance. All day long they just waited for their husbands to come home from work/war to have lots of dirty sex with them. [...] The message here is 'Make ding dong not war'. Nice. When Women Played Ding Dong is not exactly a big, juicy roastbeef of a film. It's not even funny and mostly just retarded. I love caveman movies and Raquel Welch and all that, and I have nothing against a good sex/comedy now and then (in moderation that is). But to call this a good movie is madness. Still, I kinda liked it. It's full of dumb jokes, hot cave-chicks sporting 70's hairstyles, a fucked-up title tune that will haunt your ears forever and, of course, plenty of ding dong. [...] There's something about this movie that will appeal to you if you dig bad movies and/or if you're crazy in the head (like yours truly). It's the type of movie that you have to take by the horns and tame as you watch — simply because it's weird. Strange. Odd. It's extremely silly. Seriously, it even has cavemen who play electric guitars. And as we all know; entertainment doesn't get much better than cavemen, shapely ladies and el guitars."

Trailer to When Men Carried Clubs and Women Played Ding-Dong:

Dirty Mind of Young Sally

(1971, dir. Bethel Buckalew)

Maybe made in 1970 or 1973. See what we said in Country Cuzzins in Harry Novak Part VI: Bethel Buckalew was (possibly still is) a real person and a real name and not pseudonym of other sleazemongers. OK? Got that? Now to Dirty Mind of Young Sally...

Future popular porn actress Colleen Brennan (of, among others, Supervixens [1975 / trailer]) made her film debut in the title, billed as "Sharon Kelly". In 2011, the long-retired and generally silent redhead gave an interview to Rock! Shock! Pop! in which she said, in regard to Bethel Buckalew: "Buckalew was the perfect director. He was very even-tempered, mellow. I think he was good at editing in his head while he was shooting. These movies were so low budget raw stock was a major expense, so shooting efficiently was a valuable skill. He was also arguably the best-looking director doing sexploitation in the 70s. But by now, of course, he's dead or worse — way-creepy old.* Sigh. [...] Before the first shot [of Sally] Buckalew leaned in and quietly taught me everything he wanted me to know about movie-making. He pointed and said, 'That's the microphone, and that's the camera. Don't look into the camera.' I never did."

* In comparison to wrinkly and saggy old, like she (born 1 December 1949) must be by now.

Trailer Dirty Mind of Young Sally:

All Movie says that Colleen nee Kelly "is the only bright spot in this sluggish exploitation film": "Kelly plays 'Dirty Sally,' a pirate-radio DJ whose mobile broadcasts center around the sounds of herself having sex in her van or talking dirty to her listeners. Subplots focus on a comic-relief sheriff, who makes his idiotic sidekick Sgt. Dimwiddle (Norman Fields, who supposedly can be found in Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song [1971 / trailer below]) shine his shoes and give him massages. Dimwiddle also picks his nose and eats what he finds, which is about as funny as this film ever gets. Most of it is softcore bump-and-grind, which sometimes crosses the line into more explicit territory. Actually, it also crosses the line into nausea, since the male cast members tend to be fat hairy slobs with grubby beards and huge rearends, while most of the females have large, visible Cesarean scars. Slow-moving, un-erotic, and stupid, this is a major disappointment from a director who usually manages to entertain and titillate in equal measure."

Trailer to Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song (1971):

Trash Cinema Collective is less hard on the film: "The Dirty Mind of Young Sally is an easy, lightweight, bit of none-intrusive social commentary chock full of naked breasts and unaroused members. The glue that holds the whole flick together is Colleen Brennan as the adorable and sexy lead character, Sally. Colleen has a very natural way about her. Almost a girl next door sort of sexiness. She doesn't have much more to do in the film besides talk dirty, smile and get naked, but she does it such charisma and openness one cannot help but be enchanted."

There is a plot, of sorts, a pithy version of which is given by frankfob2 (frankfob2@yahoo.com) at imdb: "Sally runs a mobile 'pirate' radio station — which she operates from her van — where, in her sexy and sultry voice, she encourages her listeners (mostly teenagers) to use the music she plays 'to ball by'. She also takes calls from her listeners and even offers herself as a prize in a contest. Her show is so popular it winds up 'turning on' large numbers of the local population. The authorities, of course, can't allow that to happen, so they send out the cops to find her and shut her down."

DVD Verdict says "The Dirty Mind of Young Sally takes this notion of non-existent storyboarding to an absurd extreme. Long-time Novak hack Bethel Buckalew [...] inserts about 45 seconds of non-dirty dialogue in between every scene of elongated interloping. Plot points (like Sally's organ transplant-based reasons for starting a pirate radio station) are swept under the rug while more and more members of the Oh! Calcutta! cast album get starkers and share STDs. In fact, the last 40 minutes is nothing but boot-knocking."

The Toy Box

(1971, dir. Ronald Víctor García [as Ron Garcia])

Director Ronald Víctor García, who also wrote the flick, went on to a long, still-running career as TV director and cinematographer. The Toy Box can be found on-line in a hardcore version, particularly if you search under the movie's Italian title La Scatola Dei Giochi Erotici, but the truly XXX scenes were obviously added at a later date.

The Opening Credits of The Toy Box:

We took a quick look at this flick in our R.I.P. Career Review of Paul Hunt, where we kept things short: "Paul Hunt acted as producer (along with the great Harry Novak) and cinematographer for Garcia's infamous trash favorite, The Toy Box. Girls, Guns and Ghouls says: 'Ron Garcia [...] created a pure gem of a film in The Toy Box, one of the most enjoyable little movies I've seen in many a year. I can only urge any cult, horror or sleaze fans out there to pick it up, I can't imagine anyone who reads these pages regularly being disappointed. Then again, how any film that shows buxom screen goddess Uschi Digard naked on a revolving bed, being caressed by the bedsheets of the bed can be passed up by anyone is beyond me.' (Full review here.)"

Critical Condition, on the other hand and like most, was less impressed: "[An] incomprehensible mess that has mucho nudity but makes very little sense. A group of sexual exhibitionists gather at a secluded mansion to put on sex shows for the enigmatic 'Uncle' (Jack King of The Creeping Terror [1964 / full movie / trailer below]), who may or may not be dead. Once they are done with their performances, the sexual participants are allowed to pick a prize from 'The Toy Box' as a token of Uncle's thanks. Things are not going good. People are being murdered by their sex partners while Uncle watches. Some people disappear and the occupants are not allowed to leave the mansion. In the end, we find out that this is all a plot by an alien race to kidnap humans and use their brains as a drug to get high! This hodgepodge of sex and horror is confusing to the extreme. The story is downright impossible to follow. Toss in a lot of post-sync dubbing, plentiful simulated sex (including oral sex with hilarious 'slurping' sounds dubbed in) and annoying gel lighting and what you get is a potpourri of nonsense. [...] The Toy Box (aka The Orgy Box) is rough going for even the most patient viewer."

Trailer to The Creeping Terror (1964):

Erika's Hot Summer
(1971, writ & dir. Gary Graver)

Eight NSFW Badly Dubbed Minutes of Merci Montello
Moanin'& Groanin' in Erika's Hot Summer:

Novak distributed this movie, which we looked at briefly in our R.I.P. Career Review of Paul Hunt, where we more or less wrote: "The Erika of the title is no one less than the great Erica Gavin [born Donna Graff] (seen here to the left) of the fun Russ Meyer film Vixen! (1968 / trailer), the Russ Meyer masterpiece Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (1970 / trailer) and Jonathan Demme's entertaining directorial debut Caged Heat (1974 / trailer). Erika's Hot Summer also features Playboy December 1972 Playmate of the Month Merci Montello (seen here to the right, of Byron Mabe's Space Thing [1968 / trailer below]). Plot? Well, basically, Erica vs. Merci for the heart and wiener of Steve (Walt Phillips), a fuck-around photographer."

The full film can be currently (18 Sept. 2014) found at this Russian website here.

NSFW Trailer to Byron Mabe's Space Thing (1968):

Space Thing 1968 trailer Byron Mabevon soulpatrol 

Machismo: 40 Graves for 40 Guns
(1971 written & directed by Paul Hunt)

Trailer to "the Best Action Film of the Year":

Re-released in 1977, watered down in violence, as The Great Gundown. Novak produced and distributed Machismo: 40 Graves for 40 Guns— and even shows up in it somewhere, briefly, as one the members of Harris' gang — which we looked at briefly in our R.I.P. Career Review of Paul Hunt, where we kept it short: "Pycal at imdb says: 'This is indeed one of the most incompetent and amateurish looking films I have ever seen. [....] Some of the nighttime photography in this thing is so bad that it makes one of the principal actresses look like a two-headed camel. The film's plot is really nothing new and is essentially a cross between The Magnificent Seven (1960 / trailer) and The Dirty Dozen (1967 / trailer): A group of Mexican banditos (led by a Danny Trejo look-alike) receive a pardon for their crimes if they are willing to ride into town and defeat a gang of American outlaws who just made off with a large supply of gold (these details relayed to the viewer through one of the most inept and unintentionally funny voice-over jobs I have ever seen)'."

All Movie is less negative in their description of the movie: "Fast-paced and violent, this Mexico-set western chronicles the bloody struggle over a stolen gold cross. The murderous Harris gang started the trouble by stealing the icon from a Tecate church in a terrifying raid that left many townsfolk dead or brutalized. The head Federale assigned to bring the gang in realizes he is dealing with monsters and that to catch them he must fight fire with fire by enlisting the aid of the most notorious crook in prison with the promise of a pardon if the outlaw and his men are successful. When the two ruthless gangs finally clash, amidst considerable furor and treachery, unparalleled bloodshed and chaos ensues." A Hemingway ending awaits the viewer.

Australian Trailer to "the Best Action Film of the Year":

I Drink Your Blood & I Eat Your Skin

I Drink Your Blood
(1971, writ & dir. David E. Durston)
 
Trailer to the Infamous Double Feature
I Drink Your Blood& I Eat Your Skin:

Film one [I Drink Your Blood] aka Blood Suckers and Hydro-Phobia. We were rather surprised that the normally reliable Critical Condition would get it like totally wrong in their Harry Novak profile by saying "The infamous I Drink Your Blood was one of Novak's early horror pick-ups"'cause, as everyone knows, the film was actually produced / distributed / regurgitated by the equally noteworthy and pioneering but less idolized sleazemonger Jerry Gross (26 January 1940 — 20 November 2002). But, hell, what'd'ya know: Critical Condition might be right. Yes, Jerry Gross did indeed pick up this film and team it with film producer/writer/director Del Tenney's 1964 mega-cheap, Florida-shot zombie flick I Eat Your Skin (aka Zombie Bloodbath, Zombies, Voodoo Blood Bath and, theoretically, Caribbean Adventure) to produce one of the most-famous double features of all time, but there is some evidence that Novak / Boxoffice must have been there somewhere: during Novak's time with Something Weird, among the many VHSs released was a series of three volumes of Harry Novak's Boxoffice Bonanza of Sexploitation Trailers, all of which featured trailers to known projects of Novak & Boxoffice. And in Vol 3, amidst all the other trailers, is the trailer to the I Drink Your Blood / I Eat Your Flesh double feature. So, hey — let's take a look at the films!

I Drink Your Blood is a violent, cheesy and noteworthy sleaze classic, "loosely inspired by the Charles Manson Family"; according to the Encyclopaedia of Horror (Milne, Willemin & Hardy [Ed.] Octopus Books), I Drink Your Blood was one of the first movies to receive an X-rating from the Motion Picture Association of America based on violence rather than nudity. Due to the early problems with getting an acceptable cut, dozens of versions of the film exist, though a definitive "director's cut"— complete with depressing ending — is now also available.

Director David E. Durston (10 September 1921 — 6 May 2010) has some rather odd films to his resume: after I Drink Your Blood, his last "mainstream" film was the STD horror Stigma (1972 / trailer), but under the pseudonym "Spencer Logan" he wrote and directed two gay porno films — Boynapped (1972 / NSFW trailer) and Manhole (1978) — both featuring the (bisexual) Wade Nichols and the (usually straight) Jamie Gillis; the latter film, in 3-D, now lost (as far as we can tell), also featured Zebedy Colt.

Wade Nichols as Denis Parker Singing Like an Eagle:

Critical Condition says "This film, along with Last House on the Left (1972 / trailer), is the granddaddy of early 70s exploitation sleaze. [...] A cult of Satan worshippers (led by the singularly-monikered Bhaskar) arrive in a small town that is soon to be flooded when a dam is completed. They rape a girl (Iris Brooks of Is There Sex After Death? [1971 / full movie]) and force-feed LSD to her angry grandfather (Richard Bowler). In retribution, a little boy (Riley Mills) injects rabid dog's blood into their meat pies, turning the band of Satanists into rabid, frothing-at-the-mouth maniacs. They infect almost everyone (including a bunch of dam workers who fuck one of the slutty female Satanists) until only a handful of normal people are left. We learn that hydrophobia (aka: rabies) is quite painful. It causes a dreaded fear of water and the color red as well as causing the infected to have murderous tendencies. Thank God that our hero drives a red car and there are plenty of garden hoses on hand! The police are finally called in and shoot all the infected, as the town doctor says he would prefer them to die this way because, 'Death by hydrophobia is agony!' Even though it is a cheap and somewhat-dated film, it really delivers in the gore department. Hands, legs and heads are cut off. Grandpa is found with a pitchfork through his neck. Multiple impalements abound, including an infected pregnant girl who drives a stake through her stomach. [...] David Durston keeps things moving at a brisk pace, never giving you enough time to realize how ridiculous the entire proceedings are. Viewing this film for the first time in nearly fifteen years made me long for the good old days when theaters offered fare such as this on double and triple bills. I Drink Your Skin richly deserves its reputation."

Cult Review might add: "While the film is rather tame by today's standards, it was still ahead of its time compared to other exploitation efforts. The performances are adequate and Carrie, the deaf mute (an uncredited Lynn Lowry) is quite unsettling. Indian dancer and artist Bhaskar Roy Chowdhury is over-the-top as Horace Bones and does a pretty decent job [...]. The gore holds up fairly well considering that it was made forty years ago. It features self-immolation, violence against live and dead animals, decapitation, limb severing, gang rape, and infanticide. [...] David Durston was upset that his original title for the film, Phobia, was retitled to I Drink Your Blood by Jerry Gross despite the fact that there is little blood drinking anywhere to be seen."

Lynn Lowry now enjoys an active career as a "cult actress" in multitudes of low budget horrors, and she has some notable roles in other notable films, including They Came from Within (1975 / trailer), The Crazies (1973 / trailer) and Cat People (1983 / trailer).

Full Movie — I Drink Your Blood:

I Drink Your Bloodvon crazedigitalmovies

Film two: I Eat Your Flesh, from the legendary (?) Del Tenney (1930 — 21 February 2013), assistant director to Jerald Intrator's Satan in High Heels (1962 / trailer) and Orgy at Lil's Place (1963), writer & director & producer of The Curse of the Living Corpse (1964 / trailer), I Eat Your Flesh, and Descendant (2003 / trailer), and producer of Violent Midnight (1963 / scene), The Horror of Party Beach (1964), the star-studded fiasco that is The Poppy Is Are also a Flower (1966) and the absolutely terrible slasher Do You Wanna Know a Secret? (2001 / trailer)* — among other stuff. According to "common knowledge", after Tenney finished "Caribbean Adventure", it sat unreleased for six years until Jerry Gross (of Cinemation Industries) picked it up for the second half of the double feature with his in-house production I Drink Your Blood / Blood Suckers, retitling it I Eat Your Skin. (Again, we don't really understand how Novak fits into the equation.)

* A film so bad, we couldn't bring ourselves to writing a review after watching it.

Del-Aires performing in The Horror of Party Beach:

Jerry Magoo says: "I Drink Your Blood was quite clearly made in response to the Manson killings. I Eat Your Skin has nothing to do with anything. It also doesn't make a lot of sense. [...] The 'plot' of the film revolves around a romance writer (William Joyce), his agent (Dan Stapleton), and the agent's wife (Betty Hyatt Linton), who make a trip to an Island called Voodoo Island where a plantation owner (Walter Coy of The Pahntom of Rue Morgue [1954 / trailer], Cult of the Cobra [1955 / trailer] and Them! [1954 / trailer]) and scientist (Robert Stanton) are making zombies. The daughter of the scientist (Heather Hewitt of Mission Mars [1968 / trailer]) is a love interest for the romance writer. That makes the film sound like it makes a lot more sense then it does. [...] It doesn't all fit together at any point. [...] I Eat Your Skin must be seen to be believed. The whole film is so absurd I could hardly believe it was real."

After Jerry, Analog Medium almost sounds ironic: "I Eat Your Skin is the first Del Tenney movie I've had the pleasure of watching. It won't be the last. I was impressed, to say the least, at the level of expertise he displayed in juggling the various stylistic elements of the film. It's intentionally funny as well as super-campy. It has sex and violence, zombies, voodoo, and anything else you need for an entertaining night at the drive-in. The zombies were kick ass, too. I Eat Your Skin is another example of the missing link between voodoo zombies and re-animated corpses. [...] Visually, though, they more closely resemble the rotters later pioneered by George Romero. They also look suspiciously similar to the classic zombie from I Walked with a Zombie (1943 / trailer), however. Whatever kind of zombie you like the best, there will probably be something you like in I Eat Your Skin. And if not, there's a huge explosion at the end."

Full Movie — I Eat Your Skin: 

 


Roseland

(1971, writ. & dir. Fredric Hobbs)

"You cannot fart around with love."

Perhaps one of the odder films that Novak ever ended up with, but he was always sure that when it came to ticket sales, "There's a buyer for everything". Director Fredric Hobbs — aka Charles Fredric Hobbs — is/was less a filmmaker than an artist (a graduate of Cornell, he also studied at the Academia de San Fernando de Bellas Artes in Madrid), and as an artist, he occasionally made films.

Bleeding Skull, which admits that they would "never, ever recommend a Fredric Hobbs film to anyone", puts it so: "Like Andy Milligan and William Klein, Hobbs is an outsider — first and foremost. As such, nearly 90% of this planet's population will be repelled, frazzled, or struck comatose in the presence of his ambitious films. They're inexplicable. They're beyond surreal. And most of the time, you're watching in hopes that something more, something aggregated, is going to happen. But it rarely does. Instead, we are left to contend with the affects of a brilliant musical interlude amidst tons of naked people (Roseland), an eight-foot-tall sheep/poop monster amidst political fumbling (Godmonster Of Indian Flats [1973 / trailer]), and a pot-obsessed Nazi vampire amidst something else entirely. Welcome to Alabama's Ghost (1973)."

From Roseland — "You Cannot Fart Around with Love":

The male singer above is E. Kerrigan Prescott (25 March 1931 — 20 January 2009, of Fiend without a Face [1958 / full movie / trailer] and Subway in the Sky [1959 / Hildegarde Knef sings in the movie]). He is billed as "Adam Wainwright the Black Bandit" in Roseland.

The Worldwide Celluloid Massacre has the following to say about Fredric Hobbs and his movies: "A freaky film-maker who takes the art of bad and cheesy film-making beyond this world into another dimension. Combining illogical writing, completely random plot development, b-movie horror and cheese, odd choices of insanely dull scenes and dialogue and other indescribable elements, Hobbs makes some of the most mind-warping movies ever in the sense that your mind tries to run away from the black hole that is Fredric Hobbs in any way possible."

It is a description we here see as positive, but they obviously mean as negative, for they go on to call Roseland "Worthless", describing the plot as follows: "A sex-addict singer (Prescott) goes insane, drooling over stripshows, performing his own show, stealing pornographic films and hallucinating. His dreams and visions include a strange population in skimpy outfits or S&M gear, hordes of nude people, a monumental penis, ominous organ players and lots of sex. He discusses his affliction with a priest who is researching perversion and porn, while his manic shrink tries to treat him, and a black Hieronymus Bosch (Christopher Brooks) appears in his cell telling him he is Adam and inspires him to build a pyramid."

Go here to Atomic Crash for a sympathetic review of Hobbs and Roseland. 

Christopher Brooks, by the way, appears in all Hobbs' films except the first one, Troika (1969), and can also be found in Barry Mahon's Jack and the Beanstalk (1970) and somewhere in The Mack (1973 / trailer below) as "Jesus Christ".

Trailer to The Mack (1970):

The Takers

(1971, dir. Carl Monson [as Carlos Monsoya])

"I've been screwed better by salesmen!"

The perfect movie for a rainy Sunday afternoon...

Boxoffice distributed this movie, the directorial debut of Carl Monson (2 September 1932 — 4 August 1988), the man behind the script to the better-known film title, The Acid Eaters (1968 / trailer below), which Shock Cinema kindly calls "lovably idiotic" and a "amazing, perplexing, T&A (Tits 'n 'Acid) delight".

NSFW Trailer to The Acid Eaters:

The Acid Eaters (1968)von bmoviebabe

Here, however, a one-shot wonder named "Dash Freemont" wrote the script, and it is neither a delight nor lovable: The Takers might also be idiotic, and may be full of naturally blemished T&A (tits 'n' ass), but we're talking late-era roughie territory, which means twice as much simulated (repulsive) sex, misogynist violence and across-the-board unsympathetic characters. Characters that, for the most part, were played by a cast of unknowns who stayed unknowns — with the exception of some of the babes (e.g., Kathy Hilton, Linda Marie, Anna Travers), who had negligible "careers" in expliotation films of the time.

Of the babes in this flick, eight years earlier the dreamy-eyed babe "Vicki Carbe"— aka Victoria Valentino, a name since appropriated by a silicone-enhanced stripper cum porn starlet — was Playboy's Miss September 1963. ("AMBITIONS: Acting. I've studied musical theater, but I prefer drama. TURN-ONS: My husband." The last a highly ironic statement, if you know anything of her bio.)

Film Geek Central explains the meagre plot: "The Takers is a biker film, sort of. They don't stay on their bikes very long, pausing to murder and rob people or sleep with hippie chicks. They follow a couple of high society women (Laura [Vicki Carbe] and Barbara [Anna Travers]) to their house, invade and keep them captive, using them as sexual playthings."

DVD Drive-In finds the appeal of the film limited: "OK, if you're a fan of the 'degenerates-take-hostages-in-their-own-home' sub-genre, you might dig parts of The Takers. [...] Tons of VERY hard sex and nudity and not much else to be found in The Takers. The surprise ending isn't much of a surprise [...]."

The Video Vacuum, which thinks the best line in the movie is "Okay you classy cunts, who wants to party?", tends to disagree with the last, saying: "I particularly liked the ending [...]. I'm not going to reveal what exactly happens, as it's one of the few truly worthwhile things about the picture; just know that it's pretty unexpected and even a bit 'arty' too." The full film can momentarily [18 Sept 2014] still be found online at this very NSFW sex site, XXBunny.

Carl Monson followed up The Takers the same year (1971) with the John Carradine horror flick, Legacy of Blood.

Trailer to Legacy of Blood:

 


Caged Virgins

(1971, writ. & dir. Jean Rollin)

Aka Vierges et vampires, Requiem Pour un Vampire and more. After The Nude Vampire aka La Vampire Nue, the second Jean Rollin film that Novak bought the US domestic rights to and then foisted upon an unsuspecting public which, we are sure, was anything but receptive — the horror auteur Jean Rollin is an acquired taste.

As we mentioned in our R.I.P. Career Review of Jean Rollin, we think "Requiem for a Vampire would make an excellent double feature with that surrealistic non-horror art film Black Moon (1975 / trailer below), if only for the totally in-the-middle-of-an-untold-story way of opening the film." Supposedly, to get around censorship problems in places like the UK, Rollin shot two versions of certain scenes, thus versions exist with more or less nudity. In both versions, the hairy armpits of the Euro-girls remain unchanged.

Trailer to Black Moon (1975):

The plot to Caged Virgins, in its simplest form: Two women (who fuck around a lot for virgins) on the run from something run into lesbian vampires in a castle and must decide between eternal life or remaining human.

Critical Condition knows more about this movie, which "totally lacks any coherence": "Two girls, on the run from the law, try to find a place to hide. After one of the girls falls into an open grave and is nearly buried alive by a pair of drunken gravediggers, the duo stumble upon a château. After some lesbian lovemaking, they search the château and run into a bunch of vampires, who capture the girls and chain them up in a dungeon along with previous female captives. The two girls are horrified as they witness the other women being raped and bitten by the band of horny vampires. The two girls are told by a female vampire that they are needed to perpetuate the vampire race, since they are a dying breed. Since the two girls are virgins, they must be penetrated by the master vampire before the process can be complete. One of the girls likes the idea, but the other detests it and secretly fucks a man she meets in the graveyard. The master turns out to be a compassionate vampire. Since he is tired of watching his minions slaughter innocent victims, he allows the two girls to kill his assistants and then traps himself and his female partner in a tomb. The two girls run off into the night, free to bump pussies once more. [...] What it lacks in sense it more than makes up for in inventive photography, weird lighting and female flesh."

Over at DB Cult, Rollin explains his intentions with Requiem for a Vampire: "My second and last film shot for recreation. I was used to the critics' insults, the public outcry, and I started shooting for my personal pleasure exclusively since the others had rejected me. Requiem is an attempt to simplify the structure of a film to an extreme. This concept was pushed even further in La rose de fer (1972)."

As Movies about Girls says, "Jean Rollin is often accused of making torturously slow films, and while it's true that Requiem's pace is glacial, it is virtually impossible to stop looking at. There is something entirely otherworldly about it, from the clown-suited Lolitas to the tired, frumpled Dracula. It makes no sense in this world, but in some downer-addicted parallel dimension one lost weekend away from this one, it's probably dead-on accurate."

Trailer:

Below the Belt

(1971, writ & dir. Bethel Buckalew)

"A Penetrating Look into the Sordid World of Bruises and Broads!"

Another Bethel Buckalew movie that, as so often, is often (and probably incorrectly) credited to Pete Perry. As AVexplains, Below the Belt follows "Novak's early-'70s formula: A few minutes of gangland tough talk in some featureless office gives way to extended scenes of simulated sex, with the principals positioning heads and legs precisely enough to avoid an X rating. Then the crooks hook up and talk some more before the next buxom distraction wanders in..... in Below The Belt, the criminal element convenes in a rural milieu as sweaty and dusty as those in Buckalew's 'hicksploitation' outings Midnight Plowboy (1971) and The Pigkeeper's Daughter (1972)."

NSFW White Slavery Scene from Below the Belt:

At Fandango, Paul Gaita explains the plot: "Sexploitation vet John Tull stars as Sammy Beal, a less-than-scrupulous boxing manager whose current protégé is virginal country boy Johnny (Steven Hodge). Half-pint Sammy is a walking textbook example of Napoleon complex: when he's not screaming his sweaty head off at Johnny or punch-drunk assistant Benny Bravo (George 'Buck' Flower), he's mauling and berating any woman that comes within grabbing distance (including sexploitation mainstays Rene Bond and Uschi Digart, whose poolside romp with Tull should please her fans). Naturally, he dissolves into a whimpering man-baby immediately after sex. Johnny's rough-hewn skill at the sweet science catches the eye of cigar-chomping mobster Louie Gardino (Frank Finklehoffer), who dispatches comely B-girl Lisa (Mirka) to distract him from his training. The naïve pugilist naturally falls for her voluptuous charms, but trouble rears its head when he catches her in a bedroom tussle with Sammy. Things rapidly come to an ugly end for all involved."

Mirka Madnadraszky Gets Naked in Below the Belt:

Woody Anders of The Last New Jersey Drive-In on the Left calls the movie "pretty standard soft-core sexploitation fare", saying "Bethal Buckalew relates the sordid story at a plodding pace, but fortunately crams this schlock with more than enough gratuitous nudity and sizzling soft-core sex to make this junk a perfectly agreeable diversion. The exquisitely busty'n'lusty Uschi Digard steams up the screen by engaging in scorching hot raunchy sex with Sammy in a swimming pool. The ever-adorable Rene Bond [pre-boob job] likewise heats things up as a lovely hooker Sammy first terrorizes before doing just what you think with. Leggy and statuesque brunette knock-out Mirka Madnadrazsky as the enticing Lisa may not be much of an actress, but she sure looks mighty tasty in the buff. The bluesy theme song provides a solid belly laugh. Ditto the surprise downbeat ending."

John Tull seems to have retired from movies after his last film and first fully X-rated performance in Balling for Dollar$ (1980).

A lotta NSFW Uschi:

Below The Beltvon bmoviesheroes2

Prostitution Pornography USA

(1971, dir. Susumu Tokunow [as Alvin Tokunow])

Released as Strange Love in Germany. As far as we can tell, Tokunow only ever directed one other film, Bang Bang (1970), co-directed by William B. Kaplan); like Kaplan, Tokunow has had a long and active career in LaLa Land as a sound mixer for films ranging from Microwave Massacre (1983 / trailer below) to The Bling Ring (2013 / trailer). Harry Novak was the executive producer, as "William J. Garvin". The XXX Filmography, 1968-1988, by Jason S. Martinko, says "Director Susumu Tokunov appears on-screen as an interviewer talking to call-girls and street people in this fake documentary. Also known as Porn USA."

Trailer to Microwave Massacre (1983):

DVD Talk says the documentary is "in the true spirit of every other Harry Novak efforts, this 79-minute sizzler is a solid 60/40 — 60% carnality and 40% narrative nothingness". They explain the vignettes: "Set up as a collection of four 'true' stories (though a fifth fatso appears briefly), we meet high-class call girl Joanne (Barbara Mills [23 February 1951 — 15 December 2010], seen lounging below not from the film), sullen streetwalker Marilyn (Ann Perry), pampered porn star Donna (Neola Graef), and junkie whore Lauren (Stephanie Sarver). Our first professional walks us through the tricks (and the 'tricks') of the trade. We see her bathe, primp, and then service two older clients. The second regales us with horror stories about pimps and abusive Johns. Naturally, she screws two sailors, and gets her body beaten by an S&M perv (Norman Fields). Number three allows her story to be told while working on two film shoots. She extols the virtues of making movies, including the caution one needs to apply when working with well-equipped donkeys (?).

After a brief interlude with an obese babe (who uses food as a means of overcoming a teen years' gang rape), we meet the mainlining queen of the BJ. While oral quickies in the dirtiest bathrooms available are her basic bread and butter, she also services female clients with her tongue talents and varied collections of sex toys. Toss in an interview with a love merchant and a man on the street sequence, and you've got an amiable overview that's short on truth but long on softcore lewdness."

For the culturally minded of you, the drawing to the upper left of the four images below is by the great Franz von Bayros (28 May 1866 — 3 April 1924), a master of erotic art well worth checking out if you don't know of him yet.

 

The Exotic Dreams of Casanova

(1971, writ & dir. Dwayne Avery)

Jeri Lynn Sings the Theme Song to
The Exotic Dreams of Casanova:

Aka The Young Swingers— but not to mistaken with the family music film from 1963 of the same name (poster below).

Over at Letterboxed, jeff rouk calls this movie "absolutely crazy": "A sort of Inception (2010 / trailer) meets Flesh Gordon (1974 / trailer below) with the sci-fi replaced by a surreal courtroom 'drama'. It starts out as a period piece. Casanova bedding a beautiful woman. Then it turns out that it's Joe Casanova (a descendent of the more famous 18th-century Italian), and we're actually at a swingers party arranged by, um, Santa Claus. Well, a guy named Bastor (Jay Edwards) dressed as Santa (for the entire movie). After an extended and already rather surreal orgy sequence (including whipping and whipped cream, a man in a fez and a camp man watching some lesbians, a man dressed as Robin Hood (John Vincent of The Psycho Lover [1970 / trailer], The Cult [1971 / trailer] and Flesh Gordon) in a swing and a sailor dropping soap in a shower... I could go on), Joe Casanova (Johnny Rocco of The Joys of Jezebel [1970 / first 2 minutes]) bumps his head while (literally) swinging. This then leads to a dream / fantasy courtroom scenario for the rest of the movie, itself littered with dreams / fantasies within the dream. Of course this leads to the ultimate redemption of Joe (this is a movie with a moral to it!), but it does become a bit difficult for a while working out what is real and what isn't, especially as the cast all dress the same wherever they are (or are undressed in many cases) [...] In the end, I think I actually quite liked it, without really meaning to."

The no-budget poster above, obviously enough, incorporates artwork by the great Tom of Finland, whose tales seldom featured hot gals.
Lots of Uschi Digard — billed here as "Bridgette"— which always makes a film more enjoyable.

Uncensored Trailer to Flesh Gordon: 

Southern Comforts

(1971, writ & dir. Bethel Buckalew)


"They felt the spirit of the hills in her jugs!"

Not to mistaken with Walter Hill's hixpliotation action film Southern Comfort (1981 / trailer). Aka Soft, Pink & Silky, co-scripted with Jack Richesin, who went on to co-write Ted V. Mikels'The Doll Squad (1973, with Tura Satana).

Trailer to The Doll Squad:

It would seem that not many people have seen this movie, and those that have didn't really pay attention. Of the first three websites we found that have a plot synopses, each varies the first details: one claims the film involves three hookers and their pimp stuck in the countryside, another says "a guy and three women on their way to a beauty contest stop at a farm when their car breaks down", while the last says a "funny family" on vacation gets stuck in a town when their car breaks down and to not die of boredom, they organize a party and a beauty contest.

But the website My Duck Is Dead, probably using, like always, someone else's text without giving credit, gets to the point: "The early 70s saw a genre of film that involved rural America, country bumpkins, as it were. One of the best was Southern Comforts. These movies really exist as an excuse for the women to get naked, and get naked they do. There are 3 main girl characters who get stranded in the sticks when their car breaks down. See them skinny dip, see them rape the country bumpkin, see them strip in a barn and strut their stuff. One of the 3 women is Monica Gayle, and her fans will not be disappointed as she spends about 75% of the film nude. Another lead character, Judy Angel, would soon appear in hard core films."

DVD Drive-In is of the opinion that the numerous sex scenes "borderline hardcore sex scenes, [but] there's the welcome humor to be expected [...] and some dialogue that will leave you in stitches." The full movie can currently [18 Sept.2014] be found at this NSFW porn site.

Judy Angel has the honor of being one of the leads in the first American feature-length, non-documentary hardcore pornographic movie with a plot to be released theatrically in the US, Mona: The Virgin Nymph (1970 / full movie). She went on to moan and groan and suck and fuck and show body hair in, among other X-rated flotsam, the incompetent x-rated "horror" flick Satan's Lust (1971 / full movie) before (like most porn actors and actresses of the time) disappearing. As did Monica Gayle, actually, who never went the full Monty with men in any of her films but did muff dive in Roxana (1970).

Another Monica Gayle Movie — Pinnochio (1971): 




Midnight Plowboy

(1971, writ. & dir. Bethel Buckalew)

Yet another movie from "the Colonel Sanders of softcore smut" who, unbelievably enough, considering he specialized in hixsville entertainment, went on to be the co-producer and assistant director of Lady Cocoa (1975 / title track) and do production work on The Black Six (1973 / trailer below) and The Candy Tangerine Man (1975 / credits) — Matt Cimber films, one and all (see: The Joy of Hustling at Mostly Crappy Books). Released in Germany as "Quellen erotischer Lust" by Germany's own Sultan of Sleaze, Alois Brummer, who recut & shortened the original version and then added around 23 minutes of his own material, which might explain the totally non-hick appearance of the German poster and VHS cover.

Trailer to The Black Six (1973):

But let's look at the original version, the title and plot of which — and perhaps needless to say — is a nicely sexploitive rip-off of the Oscar-winner, Midnight Cowboy (1969 / trailer). The Grindhouse Database says the movie, despite a "very minimal emphasis on story", is "one of the more better [sic] of the southern soft-core flicks", very much giving the impression that the movie's brevity, along with John Tull's performance, are the saving graces of the film.

The plot, also from GD: "Junior (John Tull) is a country bumpkin who hitch-hikes his way to a big life in Hollywood. Within the first few minutes of the movie (In what's supposed to be set in Mississippi) Junior is already set for what kind of adventure he's in store for when being picked up a horny blonde who strips both herself and the clueless Junior in front of her gun-toting, driver boyfriend! Upon arrival in Hollywood, Junior gets guided to a brothel — which he thought would be just a normal place to stay at... [...] Once the Madam (Nan Cee) asks if he would like to purchase one of the girls, Junior flips out thinking that the women can be purchased the same way as cattle! All of the girls soon fall immediately in love with Junior's mindless, child-like behavior and end up taking the guy to one of the rooms to sexually devour the cute little redneck [...]. Even though he just got a taste of five women (At once!) Junior feels the most for the redhead, Bernice (Debbie Osborne of Cindy and Donna [1970 / love pillows in motion] and The Cult [1971 / trailer]) and a relationship between these two will start to grow. But first, Junior would like to volunteer for work at this place when the co-runner of the escort service, Herb (Jack Richesin of Titillated Tex [1970 / NSFW trailer) hires Junior to be the chauffeur for Herb's new idea called 'Rent-A-Fuck'. What Junior will do is drive a van place to place to either drop the girls off at a desired destination, or the clients will plant themselves in the back of the 'love cabin' in the van for some fun. A little friction suddenly develops when the Madam gets a warning that the van will be blown up if it ventures into rival territory once more."

Edited Trailer to Midnight Plowboy:

Trash Film Guru finds this "this outing that unites the 'talents' of producer Harry Novak [and] director Bethel Buckalew" somewhat tedious, saying "the 'humor' quotient in this one never really rises above the 'so obvious you just have to groan' level — which is okay for 10, 20, maybe even 30 minutes, but it's not enough to carry an entire 84-minute feature, especially when the only thing punctuating it is bog-standard softcore sex that's even duller than your grand-dad's old pocket knife."

But JoeRA of Arlington, VA, disagrees, saying: "Midnight Plowboy is one of director Bethel G. Buckalew's greatest films in his all too brief career. [...] This movie [...] shows true depth and symbolism that is only matched today by a genius like Andy Sadaris. [...] The Wizard of Oz (1939) was not a success when it was initially released in 1939, why not Midnight Plowboy? Mark my words, in the near future Bethel G. Buckalew will take his place next to Orson Welles as a cinematic genius."

Trailer to the 3-D version of
The Wizard of Oz (1939):

The Godson
(1971, writ. & dir. William Rotsler) 

Breasts & Death in The Godson:

Aka Head Strong and, in Germany, as Blutjunge Mädchen — Hemmungslos, under which title it was rereleased there in 1975 as a porno flick, once again by Germany's very own Sultan of Sleaze, Alois Brummer.

AV Club bitches that The Godson follows "Novak's early-'70s formula: A few minutes of gangland tough talk in some featureless office gives way to extended scenes of simulated sex, with the principals positioning heads and legs precisely enough to avoid an X rating. Then the crooks hook up and talk some more before the next buxom distraction wanders in....."

The Grindhouse Database was also not impressed by the movie: "What we got here is a soft-core porno which follows the adventures of mob enforcer, and the Don's godson, Marco Santino (played by Jason Yukon, who packs a nifty afro and sideburns). Marco's currently stuck in the brothel business and has dreams of moving up in the organization. All the while, he gets it on with the clients and we see the clients get it on with the customers. [Excuse us? Are clients and customers not the same thing?] That's all the plot really. Of course, there's an eventual showdown between Marco and a rival in the end, but the outcome doesn't really matter 'cause you'll be bored and won't care. Might not be hard to believe, but despite alllllll the skin and allllllll the sex, this flick is really tedious."
Keep your eyes open for an un-credited Harlan Ellison as "Guy with Barbara (Jane Allyson) and Brunette" in the orgy scene; he stays dressed.

Trailer:

Trailer till The Godson från rstvideos trailerarkiv.

  

To be continued... one day.

Short Film: How Wings Are Attached to the Backs of Angels (Canada, 1997)

September 30, 2014, 3:23 am

≫ Next: Camel Spiders (USA, 2012)

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This disquieting film from 1997 is from the mysterious Craig Welch, seen here to the left, about whom we could find little on the web, other than the following much-used bio: "Craig Welch studied graphic design at the Centre for Creative Studies in Detroit and ran a bookstore for eight years. He then enrolled in the animation program at Sheridan College. He has had exhibitions of drawings and paintings in Toronto galleries. In addition to commercial animation work, Welch assisted on Toronto NFB studio productions." 

What he's doing now, we do not know, and as far as we can tell his last short film, his fourth, entitled Welcome to Kentucky (2004), has yet to be freed into cyberspace like his first and second ones, Disconnected (1988 / film) and No Problem (1992 / film), and this jewel here.

How Wings Are Attached to the Backs of Angels, presented by National Film Board of Canada, is a tale as dark and depressing as the drawings are B&W. The graceful, almost archaic-looking animation exudes a Victorian feeling that brings to mind the drawing of Edward Gorey (22 Feb 1925 — 15 April 2000). The short is a poetic tale of a recluse preoccupied with intricate mechanisms and skeletal remains who has an obsessive desire for a mysterious woman in black (played by Louise Leroux), who may or may not actually be there, or who may or may not be an angel — from above or of death, a point perhaps immaterial.

Beautiful and unsettling, oddly humorous in its presentation of Rube Goldberg extremes, How Wings Are Attached to the Backs of Angels is mysteriously tragic and oddly unsettling, and follows a dream logic that places it well within the sphere of Romantic Surrealism.

Enjoy.

How Wings Are Attached to the Backs of Angels by Craig Welch, National Film Board of Canada

Camel Spiders (USA, 2012)

October 3, 2014, 4:14 am

≫ Next: R.I.P.: Joachim "Blacky" Fuchsberger, Part I (1953-1960)

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In all truth, to write a long review of Camel Spiders would be giving the movie more attention than it deserves, even if we did sort of have a good time watching it. Originally a TV flick, Camel Spiders does lack that one special effect that makes most Jim Wynorski flicks particularly fun to watch — big and plentiful if usually plastic breasts — but for that it still zips along fast enough, features a lot of cheap-looking and laughable CGI, and displays enough flaws in both the script and the cinematography to keep the viewer guffawing as they scarf down their chips and beer.

Yes, we enjoyed it — as we have most Wynorski flicks, with the possible exception of Vampirella(1996), which we violently hate — but we would never say that Camel Spiders is anything close to a good movie. Camel Spiders, another project from RCU — Roger Corman University, a film school Wynorski has chosen never to leave — is merely yet a further Roger Corman produced  super-cheap and cheesy C-film, one of many in a lineage of bargain-basement monster animal films that goes way back to equally inane if now ancient flicks like Monster from the Ocean Floor (1954 / trailer), Attack of the Crab Monsters (1957 / trailer), Attack of the Giant Leeches(1959) and many, many, many more. And like those films, in many a decade from now Camel Spiders will probably enjoy its own nostalgia-tinged fans who get a kick out of cut-price blasts from the past.

The Facts behind Real Camel Spiders:

Needless to say, the biological and zoological veracity of the movie is null — but who really gives a fuck? Like Eight-Legged Freaks (2002 / trailer), what we have here a simple big killer spiders movie, just made with a lot less money and even less-known names than the older and admittedly better-made flick. (Rest assured, Scarlett Johansson was not a name when she made Eight-Legged Freaks.) And Camel Spiders is indeed full of hungry, killer spiders — spiders that seem to reproduce in milliseconds, for no sooner do the first three baby spiders escape than is the entire region infested with hundreds if not thousands of aggressive killer camel spiders.

In regard to the movie's narrative, Camel Spiders is pretty all-over. It starts in Iraq with a military shootout, which sets the scene for how the spiders (and the movie's lead male hero, Capt. Sturges [Brian Krause of Sleepwalkers(1992), Growth (2010 / trailer) and Coffin Baby (2013 / trailer)]) get over here: Sturges, injured, gets sent home with the dead body of a fallen comrade housing a few baby spiders. An accident on the roads of Arizona (so-stated as the location, despite the fact that all cars have California license plates) frees the spiders and, as already mentioned, in seconds they multiply and grow and spread and before you can say "premature ejaculation", Sturges, military babe Sgt. Shelly Underwood (Melissa Brasselle, whose whole limited career is based on Wynorski flicks), and a group of desperate survivors — including C. Thomas Howell, the best actor of the movie, playing Sheriff Beaumont and looking like a refugee from the Village People — are holed up in a warehouse in the middle of the desert, surrounded by hundreds of hungry spiders. Not as many of the desperate group die as should, to tell the truth, so to up the body count a few extraneous characters — mostly teenagers — show up here and there, say a line of dialogue or two, do something stupid, and then die in bloody CGI attacks.

The Village People — Macho Man:

Village People - Macho Man (version longue)von scorpiomusic

Camel Spiders is a truly and notably disjointed, possibly even stitched-together movie. For aside from the plotline above, which is the focal one, there is a secondary narrative in the movie, one involving a group of students on a field trip that have to face off with the spiders — and never the twain do meet. In fact, the student narrative simply ends with the two females locked inside a closed car that won't start. What is all the more odd is that while Sturges and his group face off the camel spiders in the desert, the students have their confrontation in a far more green and leafy environment — Franklin, Indiana, according to the closing credits. (How quickly those spiders spread!) This, combined with the final closing scenes in a drive-in that could well be recycled from another movie, accentuates the overall cheap and cheesy feel of the probable cobble job that is Camel Spiders.

So there you have it, too many words spent on a mildly enjoyably bad movie that is anything and everything but imperative viewing, but can be enjoyed if you have the right frame of mind. But, really, both Wynorski and Corman have been involved with way better movies than this tax write-off here. You're probably better off watching one of those movies instead.... or waiting a half century before you catch this one.

R.I.P.: Joachim "Blacky" Fuchsberger, Part I (1953-1960)

October 10, 2014, 1:40 am

≫ Next: Final Hour (Denmark, 1995)

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11 March 1927 — 11 September 2014

 

In all truth, much of what Fuchsberger made during this period we do not find in any way interesting, but it does reflect his quick success and is the basis of the career that followed — so here's a meandering look at his thespian roots and the tangents they brought us to.
The films begin to get interesting around 1958...

Geh mach dein Fensterl auf
(1953, writ & dir. Anton Kutter)

The title translates more or less into "Go and Open the Window". As far as we know, this "Heimatfilm" is the feature film début of Joachim Fuchsberger; he was so well-known and his part so important that his name isn't on the poster. Among the nine films that scriptwriter and director Anton Kutter (13 June 1903 — 1 February 1985) directed that we know of, he did the two short films below, neither of which have anything to do with Fuchsberger. Weltraumschiff I startet ["Space Ship I Launches"] (1937) is an early sci-fi (and dry as only a German film can be) about the first rocket to the moon, which Anton predicted Germany would do on 13 June 1963. The second film, Germanen gegen Pharaonen ["Germanics against Pharaohs"] (1939) is a Nazi propaganda short that equivalents the Nazi regime to the time of the Pharaohs. Both are presented below, in German and without subtitles.

Full Short —
Weltraumschiff 1 startet (1937):

Full Short —
 Germanen gegen Pharaonen (1939):

08/15
(1954, dir. Paul May)

Paul May (8 May 1909—25 February 1976) directed 40 films between 1935 and 1972, five of which featured Joachim Fuchsberger, and three of those belonging to the trilogy from which this film heralds. The other two titles in the series: 08/15 — Zweiter Teil ["08/15 — Part II"] (1955) and 08/15 — In der Heimat ["08/15 — At Home"] (1955).

First 15 Minutes of Part I in German:

In this series, Fuchsberger plays Herbert Asch, who over the course of the three movies advances from Gefreiter (Private) to Wachtmeister (Sergeant) to Leutnant (Lieutenant). The series made him famous. (Mario Adorf, by the way, made his film debut in the first film of the series.) We have our doubts that this whitewashing West German war-film series ever made it to English-speaking lands; we've only seen parts of it and found offensive in the same way that we find The Birth of the Nation (1915 / film) offensive: it's politics are massively skewed, the film oddly ignorant.

To simply use what's currently (12 Sept 14) written at Wikipedia: "The term 08/15 (nill-eight/fifteen, German: Null-Acht/Fünfzehn) refers to the German Army's standard machine gun, the 08/15 (or MG 08 model 15), by far the most-common German machine gun deployed in World War I. It was manufactured in such large quantities that it became the German Army slang for anything that was standard issue. [In fact, the term is still used today by the general masses to refer to anything totally mundane or unexceptional, be it a meal, a movie or what someone looks like or performs in bed.] The film follows the story of Private Asch, a German soldier in World War II. The film title implies that Asch, and the soldiers under his command, were unostentatious (i.e. 'run-of-the-mill') characters deployed on the Eastern Front. [...] The last of the 08/15 film trilogy ends with Germany being occupied by American soldiers who are portrayed as bubble-gum chewing, slack-jawed, uncultured louts, inferior in every respect to the heroic German soldiers. The only exception is the Jewish emigrant, now a US officer, who is shown as both intelligent and unscrupulous, the fact interpreted by Professor Omer Bartov as implying that the 'real tragedy of World War II was that the Nazis did not get a chance to exterminate all Semites, who have now returned with Germany's defeat to once more exploit the German people'."

As far as we are concerned, Paul May's best film is probably Scotland Yard vs. Dr. Mabuse (1963) with Peter van Eyck.

Scotland Yard vs. Dr. Mabuse (1963) — Scene in German:

Der letzte Mann
(1955, dir. Harald Braun [26 April 1901 — 24 Sept 1960])

Literal translation of the title: "The Last Man". Fuchsberger plays Alwin Radspieler in this remake of F. W. Murnau's classic silent movie, Der letzte Mann / The Last Laugh (1924 / see below), a fabulously tragic and visually superlative movie — true film art — flawed only by the happy ending the studio forced Murnau to use and which, perhaps intentionally on his part, comes across as ironically sarcastic after all the sadness that precedes the final scene, a scene in turn preceded by the only title card in the entire silent film, which reads: "Here the story should really end, for, in real life, the forlorn old man would have little to look forward to but death. The author took pity on him and has provided a quite improbable epilogue."

Harald Braun's version, a Hans Albers vehicle, is not art and is also more or less a fairytale and ends with the line: "They got married, and they had many children". Plot: "Maitre Karl Knesebeck (Albers) virtually runs the spa hotel Hövelmann because the owner (Camilla Spira) is ill. When she dies, her smoothie nephew Alwin (Fuchsberger) takes over the top post. The niece of the former owner, Niddy (Romy Schneider), for whom Knesebeck is virtually a father, falls in love with Alwin, who demotes Knesebeck to being a washroom attendant. There, Knesebeck one day meets his old friend of his, Campbell, the owner of a hotel chain. Campbell simply buys the Hövelmann, tosses Alwin out, and appoints Knesebeck as director. But can the two old men prevent the wedding between Alwin and Niddy?"

Murnue's The Last Laugh (1924) — The Full Movie:

Symphonie in Gold
(1956, writ & dir. Franz Antel [28 June 1913 — 11 Aug 2007])

By this movie here, Fuchsberger was a big enough name to be one of the the headlining stars. The movie is unimportant, one of any number of the 08/15 lowbrow musical revue films that flooded the German-language film market throughout the 40s, 50s, and 60s.

The plot, to loosely translate the Das größte Filmlexikon der Welt: "A mysterious ice dancer leads his teammates to win the European Championship. Undemanding pleasing entertainment with sport, love, a lot of music, some comedy and performances of the Vienna Ice Revue." Fuchsberger, playing "Walter Gerlos", did not do his own skating; that was done by Fernand Leemans who also plays Gerlos's film competitor "Bill Johnson".

Of more interest than this film is the Austrian director Franz Antel, a famed womaniser and possible to-the-end anti-Semite who had 100 films (and five marriages) under his belt by the time he died in 2007. His speciality was K. u. k. films ["Austro-Hungarian Monarchy films"], "[an] Austrian film genre, mostly set in aristocratic circles of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy, [involving] nearly inexhaustible dramaturgical possibilities [and] numerous operetta films. During the 60s, however, Antel began to direct, produce and/or write soft-core sex comedies under the name "François Legrand"— for example, Sexy Susan Sins Again (1968), The Tower of Screaming Virgins (1968 / 31 minutes), Wild, Willing & Sexy (1969), Don't Tell Daddy aka Naughty Nymphs (1972 / trailer) and Casanova & Co. (1987 / see below, with Tony Curtis) — many of which were nevertheless still K. u. k. films. More embarrassing than sexy today, they nevertheless have their psychotronic appeal.

Trailer to Casanova & Co. (1987):
 

Lumpazivagabundus
(1956, dir. Franz Antel)

Another Franz Antel movie — would the poster make you want to see the film? Didn't think so. Lumpazivagabundus is a remake of the 1936 version of the same name starring Heinz Rühmann, which itself was a remake of the lost (?) 1919 silent version directed by Jacob and Luise Fleck; all are based on the play Der boese Geist Lumpazivagabundus by Johann Nestroy (7 December 1801 — 25 May 1862), "the Austrian Shakespeare".

Someone who speaks some English, cynthiahost, once saw the movie and wrote a review at imdb, which we've decided to rewrite in somewhat better English: "There's a bad fairy named Lumpi (Gunther Luders), a good fairy named Fotuna (Jan Tildman), and the heavenly father (Theadore Danegger). Lumpi and Fortuna make a bet about whether money will change three good-for-nothings: an ex-tailor (Gunther Phillips), an alcoholic ex-shoemaker (Paul Horbinger), and an ex-carpenter (Joachim Fuchsberger). When all three win a lottery, all go their separate ways. Phillips dumps his waiter girlfriend (Renate Ewert) for Senoria Palpiti (Jester Naefe) and becomes a count. Fuchsberger gets his girl back, but does nothing. Horbinger find a decrepit castle and invites other hobos to come and get drunk with him there. It all turns sour. Phillips realizes that Palpiti is a gold digger, Horgbinger realizes he has had too much, and Fuchsberger want to practice his craft again and goes to America with his wife. All three realize that money does not bring happiness, so Fortuna wins the bet." Exciting.

Heinz Rühmann in Lumpazivagabundus (1936):

...und vergib mir meine Schuld
(1957, dir. Carlo Campogalliani)

Luciano Tajoli Sings in
...und vergib mir meine Schuld:

Original title, Ascoltami; released in English as Song of Naples; literal translation of the title would be "...And Forgive Me My Sins". Fuchsberger goes to Italy for a Luciano Tajoli vehicle directed by Carlo Campogalliani (10 October 1885 — 10 August 1974), whose directorial and acting and scriptwriting career(s) went way back to the silents. Campogalliani ended his career doing mostly sword and sandal and costume films with faves like Jack Palance (Sword of the Conqueror [1961 / full movie]), Ed Fury (Mighty Ursus [1961 / scene]), Mark Forest (Son of Samson [1960 / trailer]) and, of course — Sigh! — Steve Reeves (Goliath and the Barbarians [1959 / trailer]).

Mymovies.it gives this flick here no stars, calling it "a miserable pretense of a story shoehorned in and around star Tajoli's sung numbers". The plot? Imdb supplies that: "A famous singer abandons his wife and goes to live abroad with a woman he met in a night club. A car accident upsets his life — he loses his job and his new love but he regains his sons and peace of mind."

In all truth, we only include ...und vergib mir meine Schuld here as an excuse to present this lecker beefcake photo of a semi-nude Mark Forest above, who's sort of dressed in the film below.

Trailer to Son of Samson (1960),

with Mark Forest:

Die Zwillinge vom Zillertal
(1957, dir. Harald Reinl)

Trailer:

Really, what a crappy poster! Translation of the title: "The Twins of Ziller Valley"— the twins being the famed (in German-speaking Europe) Kessler Twins. Die Zwillinge vom Zillertal is an early Harald Reinl film with Fuchsberger and — Surprise! (Not!) — the lovely Karin Dor (whom most English-speakers only know as the German bad girl who gets fed to the piranhas in You Only Live Twice [1967 / trailer]). It was the first of nine Reinl films featuring Joachim Fuchsberger, any and all of which are better than this one, a "Heimatfilm" that verges on being a parody of a Heimat film, possibly intentionally, but doubtful. In the course of his career, Fuchsberger appeared in a total of 10 films with Dor, 11 if you count the German TV 2011 documentary German Grusel — Die Edgar Wallace-Serie (full documentary).

The plot, loosely translated from Filmfan.net: "Baroness von Auerstein (Margarete Haagen) is plagued by financial worries. Therefore, she wants her son Franz (Fuchsberger) to marry Daniela (Dor), the daughter of a rich merchant. While Franz spends his spare time with the twins Christel and Reserl, Daniela falls in love with a law student. Franz and Daniela pretend to be a happy courting couple to their parents, which the twins do not like..." The movie ends with the simultaneous marriage of four couples.

From the Movie — Zillertal-Boogie:

Die grünen Teufel von Monte Cassino
(1958, dir. Harald Reinl)

Fuchsberger's second movie with Reinl, a war film, also released as Battle of Monte Cassino. Filmfan.net has a plot: "Towards the end of the WW II, the fighting in Italy threatens to reach the Abbey of Monte Cassino. To save the valuable art treasures at the monastery from the American bombing raids, Schlegel (Ewald Balser), the German Lieutenant-Colonel orders to have them all brought to Rome. A parachute division holds the position as the enemies move closer."

Das größte Filmlexikon der Welt says that Battle of Monte Cassino is "a war film that strives for a certain earnestness, but is weakened by its embarrassing superficiality and historical inaccuracies; a questionable mixture of adventure and epic heroicness that thinks mainly of the impact on the audience."

The three throw-away female parts include Inge (Antje Geerk of Hard Times for Dracula aka Uncle Was A Vampire [1959 / full movie]), Gina (Elma Karlowa of Crime and Passion [1976 / trailer]) and Hélène (Agnès Laurent of England's first sex comedy Mary Had a Little... [1961 / first 9 minutes], The Sellers of Girls [1957 / see below] and The Twilight Girls [1957 / full movie]).

Has Nothing to Do with Fuchsberger —
Trailer to The Sellers of Girls (1957):

Liebe kann wie Gift sein
(1958, dir. Veit Harlan)

Fuchsberger plays Stefan Bruck, the nicer guy of the two main male characters in, to literally translate the title, "Love Can Be Like Poison", a late entry in the film career of Veit Harlan (22 September 1899 — 13 April 1964), known to some as "the baroque fascist".

Harlan's first wife, Jewish actress and cabaret singer Dora Gerson, whom he divorced in 1924, died with her entire family in Auschwitz. Veit Harlan, however, had a great career in Nazi Germany: embracing the National Socialist regime, the talented director quickly became one of Joseph Goebbels' leading directors of big budget propaganda films like Kolberg (1945 / scene). The austerity of war is not noticeable in any of his colorful and expensive movies, most of which featured his prototypically Aryan third wife Kristina Söderbaum (his second wife, Hilde Körber, he divorced to ensure his position in the NS film industry). The most infamous of his movies is surely the anti-Jew "drama" Jud Süß (1940 / full film in German).

Harlan managed to successfully defend himself against charges of crimes against humanity after the war — the Nazis controlled the content of his films, after all, not he — and enjoyed a respectable post-war directorial career, which includes West Germany's first film dealing with the topic of homosexuals, the blatantly anti-gay Das dritte Geschlecht ["The Third Sex"] aka Anders als du und ich ["Different from You and Me"] aka Bewildered Youth (1957 / full film).* Harlan died while on vacation in Capri — was the world was a better place for it?
* Did you know that electronic music and modern art and wrestling makes you queer?

The Cookies — I Want a Boy for My Birthday
(with footage from Bewildered Youth):

To loosely translate the plot description at filmportal.de: "The downfall of a girl from a good home: Magdalena (Sabine Sesselmann of Die Tür mit den 7 Schlössern [1962 / German trailer]), who grew up in a strict boarding and is curious about life, becomes the lover and nude model of a painter (Helmut Schmid of Des Satans nackte Sklavin aka The Head [1959 / full movie] and The Testament of Dr. Mabuse [1962 / trailer]), who only uses her and soon leaves her. After an exhibition of painted nudes, her father (Willy Birgel of Ein Sarg aus Hongkong [1964 / trailer below]) rejects her, and Magdalena ends as a drug-addicted prostitute. Only her childhood friend, Stefan (Fuchsberger), a medical student, still thinks well of her. But he now loves someone else (Renate Ewert of Der Rote Kreis [1960] and Agent 505 — Todesfalle Beirut [1966 / German trailer]). After two failed suicides, Magdalena dies in the hospital."

Based on a novel Andrea und die rote Nacht by Gilbert Merlin, which had supposedly for a while been indexed in Bonn as "indecent", and filmed in West Berlin, the film was slammed left and right but was a box office success.

German Trailer to Ein Sarg aus Hongkong (1964):

U47 — Kapitänleutnant Prien
(1958, dir. Harald Reinl)

Trailer to U47 — Kapitänleutnant Prien:

Yet another war film with Harald Reinl; the title, translated, is "Submarine 47 — Lieutenant Commander Prien". The real-life submarine captain Günther Prien (16 January 1908 — [presumed] 7 March 1941), commander of German U-boat U-47, was a war hero of Germany during the first half of WWII; he and his crew sank over 30 allied ships, including the British battleship HMS Royal Oak at anchor in the Home Fleet's anchorage in Scapa Flow. The movie paints Prein (Dieter Eppler of Slaughter of the Vampires [1962 / trailer] and The Pit and the Pendulum [1967 / trailer]) as a loyal patriot with a conscious who comes to realize that he cannot ignore the evil happening in his homeland, but dies before he can really do anything. There is a lot of whitewashing in the movie — Prien, an active member of the German resistance? — and Prien in the only named character in the movie that is not fictitious. Prien's death is also fictitious, as there is no documented evidence of any kind that reveals the how, where or when Prien and his crew of 47 died — they were simply never heard of again.

To loosely translate the German plot description at Filmportal: "Germany, 1939: after the U-boat captain Prien is awarded the Knight's Cross for his success on the seas, his old friend, Pastor Krille (Dieter Borsche Ein Toter sucht seinen Mörder aka The Brain [1962 / trailer] and Der Henker von London aka The Mad Executioners [1963 / trailer below]), asks him to use his position as a folk hero to intervene for those persecuted by the Nazi regime. Initially Prien categorically refuses, but gradually a change of mind occurs. Finally, a little later, when he visits his by-now jailed friend in prison, Prien realizes he can no longer support the bellicose war machinations of the Nazis. But before he can do all that much, Oberleutnant Thomas Birkeneck (Fuchsberger) kills him... and then dies himself." 

Powermetal.de calls the movie a mere footnote in the history of German film that at best is of interest — but not of imperative interest — to fans of Joachim Fuchsberger and another popular German entertainer, the Berliner Harald Juhnke.

German Trailer to Der Henker von London

 aka The Mad Executioners (1963):

Das Mädchen mit den Katzenaugen
(1958, dir. Eugen York [26 Nov 1912 — 18 Nov 1991])
German Trailer:

As far as we can tell, this obscure German Krimi is the first such film that Joachim Fuchsberger starred in. The title translates into "The Girl with Cat's Eyes".

Film-fan.net offers the same plot description that is found on many a German website, so we assume it probably comes from the DVD cover: "On the Reeperbahn in Hamburg, more and more cars are being stolen, and Commissioner Norbert Wilms (Joachim Fuchsberger) is given the job of finding out who's responsible. Meanwhile, Katya (Vera Tschechowa of Das Amulet des Todes aka Cold Blood [1975 / trailer below]), who's had some professional setbacks, returns home to her father (Gert Fröbe). Soon, she realizes something is rotten in the State of Denmark: A brutal gang of car thieves is blackmailing her father into helping them. All the criminal activity radiates from the Rio Rita Bar, where the girl with the cat's eyes bewitches the men..."

Katya, of course, gets a job at the Rio Rita Bar. And though we have yet to see the movie, we are sure Fuchsberger gets the car thieves — and the girl — in the end.

Vera Tschechowa (and Rutger Hauer) in
Das Amulett des Todes (1975) — German Trailer:

Die feuerrote Baronesse
(1959, dir. Rudolf Jugert)

Possibly aka The Scarlett Baroness. Rudolf Jugert (30 September 1907 — 14 April 1979) began his directorial career as a second-unit director, as which he even worked on a few German classics — Unter den Brücken (1946) & Große Freiheit Nr. 7 (1944 / full movie), for example — before taking on full directorial chores with his first solo directorial film, the underappreciated and interesting and experimental Film ohne Titel aka Film without a Name (1948) which, according to one online scholar, is an "inventive reflection on cinematic form and function, and the process of making movies, [which] was not seen again in German film until the rise of Fassbinder and Herzog in the 1970s." Most of the rest of his output is less interesting, but he did also do an occasional B-film like Blonde Mädchen für Havanna aka Endstation Rote Laterne (1960) — which we look at later — and Der Satan lockt mit Liebe aka Devil's Choice and/or Satan Tempts with Love (1960 / see below).

German Trailer to Satan Tempts with Love (1960):

We actually found an English-language plot description at Movies Unlimited: "Atomic-age thriller tells the gripping story of a British agent dispatched to steal top secret documents from a German laboratory. The spy (Joachim Fuchsberger) gets a leg up on his mission with the assistance of a young woman (Dawn Addams) whose father works for the secret service. [...] Dubbed in English."

The beautiful and mostly forgotten Dawn Addams (21 September 1930 — 7 May 1985) is the lead female; over at imdb, someone named Guy Bellinger hypothesizes: "Maybe because her beauty was too smooth or because her acting talents were limited or both, Dawn Addams, the daughter of an R.A.F. officer [and wife, from 1954 to 1971, of Don Vittorio Emanuele Massimo, Prince of Roccasecca], had an undistinguished film career in which second-rate pictures far outnumber quality ones." But what great "second-rate pictures" they are — among others: The Unknown Man (1951 / trailer), the embarrassing Riders to the Stars (1954 / full movie), Hot Money Girl (1959 / trailer), Die 1000 Augen des Dr. Mabuse aka The Thousand Eyes of Dr. Mabuse (1960 / trailer)*, The Two Faces of Dr. Jekyll (1960 / see below), Zeta One (1969 / trailer), The Vampire Lovers (1970 / trailer) and The Vault of Horror (1973 / trailer).

* Doesn't Dawn look fabulous in her skimpies?

Trailer to The Two Faces of Dr. Jekyll,
with Dawn Addams:

Der Frosch mit der Maske
(1959, dir. Harald Reinl)

German Trailer:

Aka Face of the Frog, based on the Edgar Wallace novel The Fellowship of the Frog. The movie that first introduced us to the actor Joachim Fuchsberger, it is fourth film he made with director Reinl, and an important one in the history of contemporary German film. To simply quote the opening of our review of the film: "When it comes to the famed German Edgar Wallace film series, this is the one that started it all: the first post-WWII, German-language film of an Edgar Wallace story." It is the template that dozens and dozens and dozens of German B-films and Krimis followed for years to come — and an entertaining film at that.

Fuchsberger, of course, gets the girl...

Endstation Rote Laterne
(1960, dir. Rudolf Jugert)

Joachim Fuchsberger in another movie directed by Rudolf Jugert (see: Die feuerrote Baronesse), this time a 100% German B-film like we like them — but we have yet to see this one. (In recent years, regrettably, German TV has substantially cut the broadcasting of all their wonderful B-Schinken of the 60s.)

Aka Blonde Mädchen für Havanna, it is a remake of the 1950 movie Export in Blond from Eugen York (the director of Das Mädchen mit den Katzenaugen [see above]), which is likewise based on the novel Plüsch und Plemowski by Norbert Jacques, the creator of the character Dr. Mabuse.

"Final Stop: Red Lights" or "Blonde Girls for Havana", as the two titles more-or-less translate into, was produced by the unsung hero of an untold number of early German trash movies, Wolf C. Hartwig, the man who brought the world such non-classics as the infamous Horrors of Spider Island (1960) and the mostly unknown (even in Germany) D-film, Isle of Sin (1960); like many an early Hartwig production, Blonde Mädchen für Havanna seems never to have made it to the English-speaking world and remains difficult to find even in Germany.

To translate semmal1985's plot synopsis found at the illegal download site Bloodsuckerz.Net: "The young journalist Verena Linkmann (Christine Görner) is on the trail of an unscrupulous white slavery ring. In Amsterdam, where she goes undercover as in a nightclub as a 'hostess', she meets the policeman Martin Stelling (Fuchsberger), who is following the same leads."

Christine Görner Sings in a Different Movie
(Mandolinen und Mondschein [1959]):

  

Die zornigen jungen Männer
(1960, dir. Wolf Rilla [16 March 1920 — 19 Oct 2005])

Fuchsberger plays the doc, Dr. Jürgen Faber. The movie is possibly aka The Scarlett Baroness— but we doubt it — and/or (the literal translation of the title) The Angry Young Men. It has yet to be released on DVD, and we have never seen it on the tube.

Director Wolf Rilla was the son of the always entertaining German actor Walter Rilla (of, for example, 4 Schlüssel [1966], The Gamma People [1956 / trailer], Day of Anger [1967 / trailer], Malpertuis [1971 / trailer], Jess Franco's Edgar Wallace film Der Teufel kam aus Akasava [1971 / trailer], and much more). Way back when Hitler came into power, Walter Rilla, a successful but Jewish actor, was smart enough to leave in a cloud of dust for England, where Wolf grew up to become a film director. Wolf Rilla directed one undisputed classic movie, The Village of the Damned (1960 / trailer), and a less classic sequel, The Children of the Damned (1964 / trailer), but ended his career with two less than notable comedies Secrets of a Door-to-Door Salesman aka Naughty Wives (1973 / see below) and Bedtime with Rosie (1975), the last with Diana Dors. The Angry Young Men is equally obscure, but is a drama. He and his wife Shirley Graham-Ellis spent their twilight years running a hotel in Fayence (Provence, France).

John Carpenter did an unnecessary and unsuccessful remake of The Village of the Damned, perhaps one of his worst movies, in 1995.

To loosely translate the plot description given in the German publication Das größte Filmlexikon der Welt ("The Largest Film Lexicon in the World"): "A Hamburg-based corporate group that produces and markets harmful drugs influences the Bundestag to put an impending ban on the backburner, blackmails a hospital, and has a harlot seduce a competent doctor. A film full of pseudo-problems that cannot hide its supermarket tabloid origins."

NSFW Trailer to Wolf Rilla's
Secrets of a Door-to-Door Salesman (1973):

Secrets of a Door to Door Salesman (1973) trailervon gpgoogle 

Die Bande des Schreckens
(1960, dir. Harald Reinl)

Trailer

Fuchsberger's fifth film with Harald Reinl and his second Edgar Wallace movie, as it was for Reinl; Reinl's then-wife Karin Dor was along for the ride in her first Wallace movie. Die Bande des Schreckens was the first one of the series to be a purely German production, the early ones being Danish co-productions. We haven't seen this one yet, but we here at A Wasted Life plan to, one day. As far as we know, it never got released in the US, but it did eventually make it onto TV as Hand of the Gallows and The Terrible People.

The Wallace novel used this time around is The Terrible People, and thus the movie is per say a remake of the same-named but now lost movie serial — so please check your attic — from 1928, directed by "The Serial King" Spencer Gordon Bennet (5 Jan 1893 — 8 Oct 1987).

Over at Die Besten Horrorfilms they call the movie a well-cast chiller-Krimi that is still enjoyable today, an opinion shared by Fantastic Movie Musings and Ramblings, which breaks the plot down to the following: "A criminal [Otto Colin, who appeared in Reinl and Dor's next Wallace movie, The Forger of London (1961)] vows to murder all the people responsible for his capture, arrest and execution. Sure enough, after the execution, the various parties responsible begin to die one by one."

Like many of the Wallace Krimis, Die Bande des Schreckens could literally be called a body-count movie disguised as a crime flick. Fuchsberger plays Chief Inspector Long, and he not only solves the case, but he gets the girl

More to follow.... next month.

Final Hour (Denmark, 1995)

October 17, 2014, 9:02 am

≫ Next: Misc. Film Fun: Music Video – Die Fantastischen Vier "Danke"

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(Spoilers — but like who the fuck cares?) Oh, how we love "uncut versions"— and how that phrase, plastered across a DVD case, always has the same effect on us as, dunno, a naked mega-mammaried female nymphomaniac in heat would have at our all-male Sexoholics United meeting. And thus it came that we, drooling in anticipation, did indeed put the DVD of the Danish slasher Final Hour (aka "Sidste time") into our DVD player. And now, the next day, we cannot help but think of a sentence we stumbled upon while doing our research for the R.I.P. Career Review of Harry Novak series: to paraphrase what some websitesaid about some sub-standard Novak sexploitation film, "We have watched this movie so you don't have to."

To put it bluntly, Final Hour sucks elephant dick — no, worse: it rims elephant sphincter. Unwashed sphincter at that. Astonishingly enough, the guilty persons behind this catastrophe — director Martin Schmidt and scriptwriter Dennis Jürgensen, both making their début in their field with this film — not only went on to make two more horror films together (Restless Souls [2005 / German trailer] & Backstabbed [1996 / Danish trailer]), but are still active in the Danish film industry today. Unbelievable — better films than this have cost many a would-be filmmaker their careers.

In theory, Final Hour is a body-count film, the basic plot of which — at least in regard to the dead teenager aspect — could be described as The Breakfast Club (1985 / trailer) re-envisioned as a slasher, but to do so would be a disservice to The Breakfast Club, a film we think sucks but is still better than Final Hour.

The plot? Friday afternoon seven students (six of which are terrible actors) get called to a classroom and suddenly find themselves locked in the school. After a bit of unconvincing interaction to establish their various stereotypes — dunno, but we figure that even in 1995, were a student to flash a big switchblade as often as Iris (Laura Drasbæk), she wouldn't be called to detention, she would be kicked out of school — Nicoline (Lene Laub Oksen, the only one of the bunch that can mildly act) tells the school's urban legend of a biology teacher who, after raping a student and getting off scot-free, was killed by a group of unknown students.

But wait! Damn if the bloody body of that dead teacher ain't hanging behind a curtain in the very schoolroom the kids are locked in. Elsewhere, Mickey Holm (Peter Jorde), a slimy TV reporter of "Final Hour", a sensationalistic reality TV show, needs his next story — so like some all-powerful being in charge of destinies, he rolls a die and suddenly gets a tip about a terrible murder at the nearby Elf Hill High School, the very school the seven teens are locked in. The rest of the film cuts back and forth between the seven students (trying to get out of the school, finding the most inane reasons to go off alone, and dying one by one) and Holm and colleagues doing their show live in front of the school as the bodies get carried out one after the other. And though the kids inside can follow the show on an unplugged TV, whenever they look out the window, the school courtyard is empty.

Is it creepy? Is it a mind-fuck movie? Is it avant-garde? No, it's a badly acted, dully directed and low-on-blood wanna-be horror flick heavy with art-school mysticism, terrible dialogue, unconvincing one-note characters, and a narrative development that is as predictable as it is illogical. Never scary, Final Hour fails on every level as a movie; the only thing it succeeds in is at being boring. Even the socially critical aspect of the flick, the persiflage of the reality TV show, is half-assed and dull and — like the by-the-numbers body-count aspects — more aggravating than anything else. (For a better but lower budgeted critique of the reality TV show mentality, we would suggest Series 7: The Contenders [2001 / trailer].)

The filmmakers all obviously thought they were making a dead teenager with a twist, but as whole they only ended up with a lemon of a movie. The rebus strip element that closes the movie — as one once-dead gal more or less says: "Hey, I think I'm having, what's that word again? Déjà vu?"— does little to make the movie coalesce. Indeed, it actually does absolutely nothing to bring the key aspects of the narrative — the murder of the teacher, the TV show, the kids in detention, the dead teacher murdering the seven students, the cross-pollination of timelines — into even the sloppiest of bows and, instead, just makes viewers feel all the more like they've been taken for a ride with a car full of rabid fist-fuckers.

A suck-ass lousy flick Final Hour is, and not worth wasting your time on. Again: "We have watched this movie so you don't have to." Go watch a film from The Asylum instead; any and all of their movies are masterpieces in comparison to this santorum-soaked dingleberry.