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Short Film: Granny O'Grimm's Sleeping Beauty (Ireland, 2008)

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Here's a cute little black comedy from Ireland that garnered some attention when it came out — it was even nominated for an Oscar as Best Animated Short, but lost out to Logorama, our Short Film of the Month of June 2011. 
Granny O'Grimm's Sleeping Beauty was directed by Nicky Phelan via Brown Bag Films http://www.brownbagfilms.com/, Dublin, with producer Daragh O’Connell. 
GrannyO'Grimm's genesis is that as a character of comedy sketch by comedian Kathleen O'Rourke. Nicky Phelan caught the act and thought it would make a nice film. O'Rourke wrote the script and once supplied the voice — and there you have it: a cute black comedy about a loving (?) granny who terrifies her granddaughter with a meandering version of Sleeping Beauty that no impressionable young child wants to hear before going to sleep.
Needless to say, the short has been screened all over the place and has received lost of nominations and awards. And now it has the honor of being A Wasted Life's Short Film of the Month for February 2015.
Enjoy.


Die Toten Augen von London (Germany, 1961)

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(Spoilers.) Edgar Wallace wrote The Dark Eyes of London in 1924, and since then it has been filmed "officially" three times. Alfred Vohrer is responsible for two film versions of the book, this one and the color version made seven years later in 1968 as Der Gorilla von Soho (trailer). The very first version, directed by Walter Summers in 1939 and starring Bela Lugosi and the long-forgotten Norwegian-born blonde Greta Gynt (a highly popular star in Britain for most of the thirties and forties) is said to follow the novel the closest. And, according to the book The Films of Bela Lugosi, it is "possibly one of the best horror films of the 1930s". Of course, a book such as that one tends to be written by a fan of the subject, so the high praise should probably be taken with a grain of salt. Most other sources simply say that the film, released as The Human Monster (trailer) in the USA, is a plain ol' crime film and average at best, only distinguished by some bizarre sets.
Decide for Yourself —
The Human Monster (full film):
On the other hand, Vohrer's version of the story, the fifth film to be made in the Rialto series of Wallace films, is definitely one of the best of the early phase of the Rialto series. (It is also the first of fourteen Wallace films that director Alfred Vohrer was to eventually make for the company.) What is meant by "early phase" is that though many of the aspects of the more "swinging" and Baroque Wallace films — such as the outlandish story, odd black humor, fabulously wild music and extreme violence — can be found in the film, none is taken to the excessively intense level that began to later appear and that dominated up until around 1972's Das Rätsel des silbernen Halbmonds (trailer), when the series went decidedly giallo. (Actually, in regards to the music in this film, the soundtrack from Heinz Funk, who also supplied the music to 1960's Die Bande des Schreckens [trailer], is so nondescript and dull that it is hardly surprising that he never again thereafter did another soundtrack for a Rialto Wallace film.)
The quick-paced script for Die Toten Augen von London was supplied once again by "Trygve Larsen", one of two pseudonyms Egon Eis wrote Wallace scripts under in addition to those he supplied under his own name. (His other favored pen name was "Albert Tanner", under which he wrote the highly entertaining Wallace homage Die Weisse Spinne in 1963 [full movie].)
Filmed very much in the mostly static fashion of US crime films — i.e., few panning shots or fancy camera tricks — Die Toten Augen von London is definitely more violent than most American product and also still has a pleasant wisp of horror to it, despite the misplaced humor supplied (as normal) by Eddie Arndt as Sunny Harvey, the knitting-addicted assistant (with an ever so light platonic homosexual attraction) to Inspector Larry Holt (series regular Joachim Fuchsberger). Holt refuses to believe that it's a simple coincidence that various old men, all insured by the same big company owned by Stephan Judd (Wolfgang Lukschy), are found dead floating in the Themes. For some unexplained reason he thinks the men have all been victims of the legendary "Blind Jack" (Ady Berber) and his band. His big clue is that pieces of papers with Braille writing are found on the bodies. Enter Nora Ward (Karin Baal, who began her career at 16 in the 1956 BRD teen-film classic Die Halbstarken aka Teenage Wolfpack [trailer]), nurse for the blind, whom they end up getting a job at Reverend Dearborn's (Dieter Borsche) home for the blind. Ward does not know that she is in line to inherit a big insurance settlement from one of the dead men (her unknown father), so of course she too is in danger. Could it be that Judd's slimy personal secretary Edgar Strauss (Klaus Kinski) is behind everything? That would be too simple, of course, so after a lot of other people die — at his hands and at those of others — he too eventually takes a swan dive. Everything all leads up to a big showdown with the top bad guy(s) in the secret basement of the home for the blind, and it looks like the end for Larry Holt and Nora Ward when...
Well, needless to say, Joachim Fuchsberger gets the girl, leaving his assistant Sunny to knit the baby cloths.
 
As quickly paced as it all is improbable, the humor in the film that is actually still funny nowadays if often only due to how out-of-date it is. The blocking of the fight scenes is pretty cheesy, too, but the murders definitely still carry a punch. And, if Vohrer isn't yet the most fancy with the camera, he does have a good understanding of composition, the use of close-ups and shadows. The disposal of a dead body to the music of Beethoven is a highpoint in the film, as is the elevator-shaft death of the petty criminal Flicker-Fred (Harry Wüstenhagen). Die Toten Augen von London will probably entertain you more than it will scare, but it could well give your little kid a shiver or two — and maybe even a nightmare.

R.I.P.: Harry H. Novak, Part XIII: 1978–79

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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 that the deceased Sultan of Sexploitation 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 for Part VI: 1969
Go here for Part VII: 1970
Go here for Part VIII: 1971
Go here for Part IX: 1972
Go here for Part X: 1973
Go here for Part XI: 1974-75
Go here for Part XII: 1976-77



Thoroughly Amorous Amy
(1978, directed by Charles Webb)

Like so many porno films, the title is a burlesque of a mainstream movie, this time around the Julie Andrews' movie, Thoroughly Modern Millie (1967 / trailer).
Did Novak finger Thoroughly Amorous Amy? Dunno for sure, but over at AV Maniacs, a dude lists it and a few other Something Weird porno flicks of the Bucky Goes to the Movies series as Novak releases, and as we know that some of the listed are indeed Novak flicks, we'll give this one here the benefit of doubt and include it — although, in truth, we couldn't find any other reference that tied the two together and thus have big doubts that Novak had anything to do with this lightweight film from the Golden Age (though it is true that he and director Webb did work together on other projects).
The career of director Charles Webb — aka Chuck Angel, Charles De Santi, Charles De Santos, Charles DeSantos — spanned from the mid-Golden Age to the video age, and none of his films are considered "classics", though this one gets a bit more positive feedback than most of his others. Somewhere online, some dude named Cartman explains whom the movie might appeal to: "Ah, when porn films had theme songs! Not to mention lots of hair, polyester, bad dialogue and love handles. The titular star is rather cute in a fifth grade teacher sort of way. The rest of the cast... not so much. Couples might like this. Those seeking quick onanism should look elsewhere."
Jason S. Martinko's The XXX Filmography, 1968-1988 has the details to the complicated plot: "Amy (Tracy O'Neil) jogs through the streets of San Francisco and is followed back to her apartment by eight guys. She only manages to take on three of them. Her husband calls (Peter Johns of Wanda Whips Wall Street [1981 / NSFW trailer]) and says he's returning home from a trip. She services him, as well as a black policeman (Mick Jones), a vacuum cleaner salesman (Rock Steadie), the neighbor (Paul Thomas) and so on. It ends with an orgy including amyl nitrate sniffing."
The music to Thoroughly Amorous Amy is an early job by Rick Nowels, who began his career with movies like this and Charles Webb's The Liberation of Honeydoll Jones (1977, see Part XII) — he even appeared in a small part in Charles Webb's Honky Tonk Nights (1978, poster below) — but now works as a producer for big names. (Madonna, anyone? Lana Del Rey? Santana? Nelly Furtado?) We all have to start somewhere.



Little Orphan Dusty
(1978, dir. Bob Chinn& Jurdan Alexander)

AKA Dusty I and Jaws of Delight, the latter supposedly for a VHS release. In the case of this porno movie here, an online search at US Copyright Office (done 7 July 2014) reveals that Valiant International Pictures applied for a copyright to this movie — good enough a reason for us to take a look at it.
Dusty I is an early John Holmes (8 Aug 1944 — 13 Mar 1988, born John Curtis Estes) flick directed by the early industry legend Bob Chinn (aka Daniel Hu Song, Daniel Husong, Danny Hussong, Harry Who, Sparky Shayne, Robert Husong, Robert Chinn, Robert C. Chinn, R. Hussong, Wizard Glick, Bob Chin, Bob A. Lain) and the less-legendary Jourdan Alexander (aka Jack Wolfe, Jacov Jaacovi, Jordan Alexander, Jaacov Jaacovi). Chinn, born in Hawaii, USA, as Robert Husong on May 10, 1943, attended Santa Monica College and UCLA's film school and began making porn with his first (and uncredited) film, a "hidden camera" mockumentary entitled Sexus in Paradise (1970), which he also wrote, produced and narrated.
Chinn, who created the popular "Johnny Wadd" porn franchise starring John Holmes' mammoth meat — possibly including any of the following titles: Johnny Wadd (1971), Flesh of the Lotus (1971), The Blonde in Black Lace aka Johnny Wadd & His 13 Caliber Weapon (1972), Tropic of Passion (1973 / full NSFW hairy movie in 6.5 minutes), Fulfillment aka Johnny Wadd Does 'em All (1974), The Danish Connection (1974 / song), Tapestry of Passion (1976 / full NSFW film), Tell Them Johnny Wadd Is Here (1976 / in 12 minutes), Liquid Lips (1976), The Jade Pussycat (1977 / full NSFW film), China Cat (1978 / NSFW scene), Blonde Fire (1978), and The Return of Johnny Wadd (1986) — was, of course, the obvious inspiration behind Burt Reynolds' character "Jack Horner" in Boogie Nights (1997 / trailer). (Holmes also appears credited as "Johnny Wadd" in Rings of Passion [1973], Hot Summer Night [1974], Dear Pam [1976], Candi Girl [1979], and Honey Throat [1980], among other films, but the characters he plays are named differently.)
Trailer to
Wadd: The Life & Times of John C. Holmes (1998):

The illegal download site forumophiliaexplains the plot to Little Orphan Dusty: "Dusty (Rhonda Jo Petty) is a runaway teenage girl who gets attacked and gang-raped by a group of savage motorcyclists [led by Turk Lyon (12 Aug 1947 — 12 Dec 1990) of Hardgore (1976)]. She gets taken into the household of a sympathetic artist named Frankie (Holmes) whom she falls in love with, but has problems adjusting to his artistic and social lifestyle. Dusty and Frankie decide to get married, but the bikers haven't forgotten her and plan to crash the ceremony to commit more mayhem." 
Little Orphan Dusty is sometimes deemed a women's revenge flick ala They Call Her One Eye (1973 / trailer) or I Spit on Your Grave (1978 / trailer) because of all the rapes and shoot-out final, but the film glorifies rape more than it does criticize — Dusty even gets her rocks off when raped, despite her pleas of "No! No!" She also gets fisted by the only female biker of the gang, an act that Dusty later does to herself when reminiscing about the rape.
The former popularity of Rhonda Jo Petty (above) is undermined by the current unfamiliarity of her name, but then she did retire relatively early in her career. As ericaboyer.com explains it: "Rhonda Jo Petty entered the porn biz in 1978, and was immediately promoted as a 'Farrah Fawcett' [see below] look-alike. Mainly because she had long sandy blonde hair, and wore it like Farrah (a lot of girls did at that time), it sure wasn't because she looked like Farrah. Anyway, as a result, her first starring role in Little Orphan Dusty made that film a box office hit, but after that, many people discovered, she couldn't act. She looked good, with a great body, awesome rack & nice ass, but she couldn't be counted on to carry a film very far with her non-existent acting abilities. So for the bulk of her career in porn, she was a supporting player. That where she worked best, a scene or two in a film she could pull off with her sexual abilities. She was a down & dirty strumpet, with a mouth like a sailor. She liked to screw for the cameras, plain & simple. She shined much better in straight scenes than in lesbian scenes. She did an occasional anal, and interracial scene, and that was her niche. Never was she to make the top tier during her career, but she cranked out over 100 features during her 9 yr stint in front of the carnal cameras, and became a bonafide legend."
A possible clue to her lackluster performances can be gleaned from Petty's own words at Golden Goddesses: "You know, I always felt when I was working that a lot of the girls were there to prove their sexuality. It would just be the biggest turn-off to me. I couldn't stand it. Some of them were really screwed up. They just couldn't wait to work and they loved it, and they were just idiots in my eyes. I saw it as a job and you were there to work. I always had a good reputation for showing up on time. I was always a good worker and there was never a problem. I did pride myself on that fact — I always suited up and showed up. My dad instilled really good work ethics in me." (According to her interview at pornstarscenter, he also began beating her when she was only 8 months old.)
In any event, in regard to the movie Little Orphan Dusty, the Crude Dude is of the opinion that: "The movie ultimately is more of an unconventional romantic drama than an ultra violet biker sleazefest [...]. Not sure if there was some intention to hint to repressed sexuality by the directors [...], but either way the rapes are politically incorrect, appearing to be erotic as if trying to arouse the audience with forced-sex fantasies (would make a feminist's head explode). [...] It's a really simple movie, just about two people with a turbulent yet loving relationship getting annoyed by bikers, some light comedy thrown in, especially at the end. A decent addition to a classic hardcore sleaze collection but definitely not the Holy Grail."
The full NSFW film can currently be found here at XHamster. Little Orphan Dusty spawned one sequel, 1982's Little Orphan Dusty II, which seems to have disappeared.



Virgin Killer / Trauma
(1978, dir. Alberto Negrin)

"Someone with a cock this big raped Angela Russo and threw her in the river!"
Inspector Gianni Di Salvo (Fabio Testi)
as he holds up his hands to depict size


Trailer:

Could it be? Did Novak have anything to do with this Italo-Kraut production? We don't know for sure, and nowhere online could we find anything that links this flick with Novak — except for the JPG below of an issue of Boxoffice from 19 February 1979, which lists a film entitled Trauma as among the VIP films "Now available". (It should be perhaps mentioned that some of the films listed "Under production"— Miss Banana Split and Three Is Not Company— seem never to have been made, so the reliability of Novak's advertisement is open to question. Still, more than one website says that Novak had the US distributor rights to The Frenchman's Garden (1978), a Paul Naschy film, but simply never released it — a fate that may have happened to this movie here, too.)
But to return to Trauma: the only film so-entitled that we could find was this movie here, an Italo gaillo originally entitled Enigma rosso (aka, among others, as Orgie des Todes, Virgin Terror, Virgin Killer, Rings of Fear, Red Rings of Fear and Das Phantom im Mädchenpensionat), the most interesting movie directed by the uninteresting Italian TV director Alberto Negrin.
Trauma is the third and final film of Massimo Dallamano's unofficial "Schoolgirls in Peril" trilogy, which includes Dallamano's earlier and better-known giallos What Have You Done to Solange? (1972 / trailer) — the second-to-last Railto Edgar Wallace movie, we looked at briefly in Part III our RIP Review of Joachim Fuchsberger — and What Have They Done to Your Daughters (1974 / trailer). Dallamano, however, died before the filming of Trauma commenced, so Negrin was pulled in for the directorial duties. In the US, Trauma arguably belongs in the public domain.
Full movie:

Horrorview.com has a plot description: "A young girl's body is found in a river. The victim is [...] a student at St Theresa's private school, and a member of a group of young girls known as 'The Inseparables'. A medical examination of the body reveals that she has also been sexually assaulted before her death. Inspector Johnny DiSalvo (the great Fabio Testi, also found in Four of the Apocalypse [1975 / trailer] and China 9 Liberty 37 [1978 / trailer]), is brought in on the case [...]. The other members of The Inseparables soon begin to receive threatening letters from someone signing himself as 'Nemesis', and mysterious accidents start to befall the young girls. One is thrown from a horse after the horse has a dart fired at it, another falls down a flight of steps after tripping on some strategically placed marbles, and various other cast members are bumped off one by one. DiSalvo meets an unlikely ally (Fausta Avelli, also of Don't Torture a Duckling [1972 / trailer], The Cassandra Crossing [1976 / trailer] and The Psychic [1977 / trailer]) [...], and together they slowly begin to piece together the reasons behind the murders. It turns out that the girls have been moonlighting for an organization of rich businessmen, and have been attending various orgies in return for large amounts of cash and free clothing from a fashion shop owner. At one of these orgies, one of the girls was assaulted with a huge dildo, and this event was the catalyst to the string of murders...."
Hysteria Lives is of the opinion that "Alberto Negrin's film works pretty well on all levels. As a giallo it is especially successful, the central mystery unravels nicely and, for once, the denouement came as a real shock — and made perfect sense in retrospect. It echoes the classic gialli of the early 70s — despite the fact that it looks a little old fashioned when compared to what was coming out of America at the time, but it does benefit from employing all the best elements of the golden age of Italian thrillers. However, at odds with this is the film's resolutely grimy feel which mixes ultra-sleaze with classic imagery (black leather gloves left by a bed-stand as a throwaway red herring and the spooky Bava-esque close-ups of a statue of a nun's face in the moonlight) with voyeuristic shower room shenanigans (observed by a leering and disembodied eye utilising Argento-esque macros) and, in a jaw-droppingly tasteless moment, inter-cutting flashbacks from an orgy scene during an abortion. Clearly this was the way that the genre was heading — reaching a zenith of delirious debauchery with Mario Landi's Giallo a Venezia a year later (1979 / sex scene).
The score to Trauma is from the great Riz Ortolani (25 March 1926 — 23 Jan 2014), who among hundreds of movies of greater and/or lesser note also scored Gualtiero Jacopetti's Mondo Cane (1962 / score), The Virgin of Nuremburg (1963 / Italo trailer), Castle of Blood (1964 / trailer), Zeder (1983) and Cannibal Holocaust (Italy, 1980).
The Full Movie —
Castle of Blood (1964) :




The Frenchman's Garden
(1978, writ. & dir. Paul Naschy [as Jacinto Molina]) 

Fan-made trailer:

Aka Iberian Psycho, La Casa que Abre de Noche and El huerto del Francés. Like Trauma, the Italian film above, the questions that arise here with this Spanish movie are: Could it be? Did Novak have anything to do with this Spanish production? And as with Trauma, we don't know for sure, but the JPG of Boxoffice published 19 February 1979 — see Trauma — lists this Paul Naschy movie as "Now available", so it would seem Harry had it in his hands at one point. Temple of Schlock confirms this concept in their comment on this movie found at Mad Mad Mad Mad Movies, in which they state: "Harry Novak was the U.S. distributor of this movie, but he never gave it much of a release. There must be an English dubbed print of it somewhere in his archives."
Many a webstite, including Wikipedia, say that the movie is based on a true story, but which one we were not able to locate (the closest killers we could find to bare any resemblance to the tale are the US American females Lavinia Fisher and/or Belle Sorensen Gunness).
Mad Mad Mad Mad Movies says that "In his autobiography, Memoirs of a Wolfman, Paul Naschy devotes an entire chapter to two films from what he calls his most 'personal phase,' neither of which have been widely seen this side of the Atlantic. One is the tour de force El Caminante (1979 / full movie) [...]. The other is the even less well-known period-piece thriller, El huerto del Francés, also known as The Frenchman's Garden. Naschy himself counts this as 'one of my most emblematic and highest quality films,' and says he is proud to be able to include the movie in his lengthy filmography. [...] I can only guess at why Naschy considered this such a personal film, but I suspect it's because, for me, this is one of the most inherently Spanish films in his body of work. Set in Spain and detailing an actual historical event, the movie is scored with traditional Spanish guitar music and utilizes actual locations and costuming. Perhaps this along with the clearly dramatic rather than horror-focused nature of the role made Paul feel it was more his — his story, his history — or maybe he felt he was showing at last what he could do without the werewolf makeup or gallons of grue."
At imdb, Mario Gauci (marrod@melita.com) of Naxxar, Malta, sort of explains the plot: "The star plays the titular character quite sympathetically, and his garden is predictably used to bury the bodies of his various victims. At first, I thought these would be inconvenient girls, since he is not only depicted as a stud but runs an inn which serves as make-shift gambling-den and brothel as well (while also taking care of his lovers/prostitutes when they get pregnant)! His crimes — with a much older man for accomplice — relate to the former vice and lend new meaning to the phrase 'get-rich-quick scheme' (though, to be fair to Naschy's character, he was feeling stifled by the ruthless Spanish class system). The latter aspect, therefore, provides a mix of social commentary and black comedy — just as the combination of the anti-hero's illicit activities is ultimately what brings him down (having spurned a girl, who had hoped he would leave his bourgeois wife for her, she reports him to the authorities after stumbling upon his secret). The narrative unfolds in flashback, eventually culminating in the meticulously-presented garroting execution. Nudity and violence are prominent here but not overstressed. [...]"
Aside from murder, buried bodies, abortion, sex and nudity, The Frenchman's Garden also includes a flamenco-dancing midget and a homosexual subplot.



Untamed
(1979, dir. Ramsey Karson) 

OK, we think Novak may have had something to do with this porn flick. Why? According to our online search at US Copyright Office (done 7 July 2014), Harry Novak applied for a copyright to a movie entitled Untamed, and this is basically the only movie so titled that we could locate that was made before 1984 that would fit Novak's oeuvre and style — good enough reasons for us to take a look at it.
Scriptwriter and director Ramsey Karson (aka Roger Kramer & Richard Kanter) seems to have entered the exploitation biz in 1968 working for David F. Friedman, for whom he wrote and directed Thar She Blows (1968) and The Ribald Tales of Robin Hood (1969 / scene); Untamed is, as far as we can tell, his last and perhaps least-interesting directorial effort, though thereafter he did do some assistant director work on mostly low budget slime — The Boy from Hell aka Bloodspell (1988 / see below), Cold Steel (1987, with Sharon Stone), Hunter's Blood (1986 / trailer), and the legendarily terrible Evils of the Night (1985 / trailer) — before slipping off the map.
Full Movie —
The Boy from Hell:

Over at Rame.net, which proffers that the film could be called "a plotless crotch opera", fills out the narrative: "[...] Another quality film which unfortunately goes into the 'you cannot do this anymore' category. It is a vignette feature with wrap-around footage of Paul Thomas & Kay Parker. [...] The now-prohibited aspects of this movie are: A scene where John Seeman [of Hardgore (1974)] does not successfully stave off the carnal cravings of his 16-year-old stepdaughter (who does not appear to be that young); and a scene in which Nancy Hoffman (who does appear to be quite young — but this isn't stressed by the dialogue) is dominated, & ultimately penetrated, in a lesbian bondage sequence. The wrap-around plot has Paul Thomas being a private detective who is touring bookstores to publicize his new tome in which he describes some of the cases on which he had worked. Kay Parker asks him about the cases which he could not include — these are the vignettes — at one point Thomas puts Kay Parker in handcuffs while describing a story...." Yawn. It would seem that the poster is the best thing about the flick.
Among the other receptacles and protein sticks found in Untamed are Jon Martin (aka Joe Wilkes, Jacky Clark, Jon Martinstein, Frank Michaels, Jerry Hull, Jerry Hess, Jeffery Stern, Rolly Evans, Bill Eastman, Ray Marlin, Jerry Jordan, Jerry Ross, Jon Marlin, Jerry Putz, John Morton, Ari Adler, Robert Metz, Mickey Rivers, John Martin, Jon Marten, Terry Blass, Paul Justin, Lyle Stewart, L. Stewart, John M, Jeffrey Stern, Jerry Heath, Jerry Barr, Jerry Smith, Fred Anton, Eric Marin, Mike Richard), who supposedly directed A Sweet Sickness (1968) and can be seen somewhere in the background of To the Limit (1995), and Abigail Clayton, who, credited as "Gail Lawrence", plays Rita and loses her hair (and life) in the original version of Maniac (1980 / trailer).
Opening shot and credits of
A Sweet Sickness:




One Way at a Time
(1979, dir. Alan B. Colberg)

The title, of course, a takeoff of the then-popular TV sitcom, One Day at a Time (1975-84); the poster may claim a "Howard Wolfe" as director, but the name is merely another pseudonym of producer/"scriptwriter"/editor Alan B. Colberg (aka Allen Colberg, Nala Grebloc, Alan Coldberg, Alan Colberg, Danielle de Nueve, Rene Deneuve, Arcen Ciel, Alan Colberg, Aaron Colberg and more), as is, we assume, the name credited on the poster as the scriptwriter, "Oscar Blair". The "Big John Holmes" on the poster plays the part of "Helmut", while Tony Bond plays the character "J.C. Holmes"— what intelligent meta-humor. 
Alan B. Colberg was/is not known for having made quality porn, which is not the oxymoron it sounds like (see anything by "Henry Paris", for example). Our online search at US Copyright Office (done 7 July 2014) revealed that Novak (or rather, Valiant International Pictures) attempted to copyright this flick, so we guess he also had something to do with it.
Jason S. Martinko's The XXX Filmography, 1968-1988 reduces the plot to: "A working mother (Aubrey Nichols) and her two daughters (Lisa K. Loring and Mimi Morgan) live active sex lives. It features the song, 'One Way at a Time' written by Freddie Red and sung by Candida Royalle."
Pre-Cert.co.uk offers a bit more detail: "When mother ['Ann'] looks as good as her two ravishing daughters ['Barbara' and 'Julie'], you can bet there is trouble ahead. After mother leaves for her job the two girls hop on their mopeds to look for some action. They are young and anxious, and it doesn't take long for them to find trouble. There is a never-ending line of virile young men, including the legendary John Holmes, who are very insistent about helping the young sisters find sexual release they are searching for. Not only guys, in fact a very comely female partner takes time out of her game to make it 40-love with one of the sisters during a break in the action..."
Mimi Morgan (the daughter "Julie") made her film début playing one of the three Eves — the one before the car accident — in the Mitchell Brothers' classic (and intriguing and hot) porn movie with a plot, The Resurrection of Eve (1973), which, as Carnal Cinema rightly notes, "is not as technically polished as some of the later Golden Age movies, but it remains one of the most involving films of its type."
Also found in One Way at a Time is the drool-worthy bisexual "Johnny Hard", found in many a straight and gay fuck film (aka as Howard O'Leary, Ricky Bradley, Johnny Harden, Gene Carrier, Johnny Hardon and Johnny Hardin); a good-looker of length and girth and self-sucking and fucking capabilities also found in B&W gay beat-sheets, he made it to the centerfold of Playgirl (September 1980) before disappearing to NYC and Paris to start a career as a serious fashion model (that's him below, now known as "Howard O'Leary"). O'Leary has for some years now — around the time the modeling offers began to dry up — raised the question of whether or not he might be the real father of Athina Roussel de Miranda, otherwise known "Athina Onassis" of, yes, the Onassis Family; O'Leary claims to have impregnated Christina Onassis "at a party in 1984 thrown by Thierry Roussel, the owner of First Model Agency in Paris." (Check it out.)




Sissy's Hot Summer
(1979, dir. Alan B. Colberg) 
 
Another Alan B. Colberg movie; Jason S. Martinko's The XXX Filmography, 1968-1988 says the movie was filmed at the same time as One Way at a Time (see above), which of course explains the almost identical cast. Director/producer/scriptwriter/editor Alan B. Colberg shows up in a non-sex role credited as "Nala Grebloc". Currently, the full NSFW film can be found online here.
According to Media Bang, "Legendary exploitation cinema producer and distributor Harry H. Novak [...] launched Valiant International Pictures in the late 70s; this particular outfit distributed such X-rated porno fare as Sissy's Hot Summer, Sweet Surrender, and Leather Persuasion."Temple of Schlock, among others, is also of the opinion that Novak touched this movie. Who are we to disagree?
According to a thread at AV Maniacs, "Sissy's Hot Summer is OK. It's an XXX take on Three's Company and is presented as a TV show. The film was directed by Alan Colberg and features Candida Royally as the host (her segments are the best)." If Sissy's Hot Summer truly is a take on Three's Company, one could surmise that this movie is perhaps the final product of the non-existent movie entitled Three's Not Company listed as "Now in production" in the VIP advert in Boxoffice 19 February 1979 (see Virgin Killer / Trauma [1978]).
The current DVD release offers the following plot description: "This story is an X-rated take-off of the hit TV series about three roommates, Sissy (Sharon Kane), Janet (Mimi Morgan), and Jack (Tony Bond). Their cozy sexual threesome becomes endangered by eviction when they fall behind in the rent, so they must hustle the only thing they know how to do for money. What follows is a comical account of their sexual endeavors. Along the way, Jack and Janet meet a rich, kind socialite (Laurien Dominique [22 Sept 1956 — 23 March 1986]) and a teenage hustler (Jeff Scott), while Sissy finds an eccentric playboy (John Holmes) who thinks he's Tarzan and lives out his fantasy in the trees with her. After a day filled with hot erotic escapades, these three roommates find enough money to pay the rent, and more than enough new sensual tricks to keep their threesome hot for a long time!" Jesse Adams and Susan Nero show up as "Mr. and Mrs. Groper".
We could only find one review online, used everywhere: "Sissy's Hot Summer is an okay classic porno that plays decently with the 3's Company theme. It has some of the feel that makes classic porn fun, and the cast seems to have fun with it. Although it was fun to see Sharon Kane in her very early years, the movie's limitations seem a bit stronger. The scenes are all very short and although I know that sex in the real world for many people doesn't last nearly as long as it does in modern porn, here it seems shorter than ever. [...] The video looks like it hasn't been given any effort since it was shot nearly thirty years ago, and unfortunately holds it back beyond the dark lighting. I wanted to like Sissy's Hot Summer, but there just wasn't enough that was done well enough to really care about it much."
Sharon Kane (aka "Jennifer Walker") went on to become a porn superstar with over 600 films to her name, including Laura Keats'Crystal Force (1990 / monster sex), which utilizes the monster suit from The Terror Within (1988 / trailer) and The Terror Within II(1991 / trailer), and Michael Paul Girard's Body Parts (1992).
The Troma Production,
Body Parts (1992), in Full:




Frat House
(1979, writ. & dir. David Worth [as "Sven Conrad"]
Any resemblance to National Lampoon's Animal House (1978 / trailer) is purely intentional.
Once again, our online search at US Copyright Office (done 7 July 2014) revealed that Novak (or rather, Valiant International Pictures) attempted to copyright a flick entitled Frathouse or Frat House (the spelling changes in the two documents we found there). This movie here is the only one with the title released during the day and age Novak was active, so though we are not 100% sure, we surmise it could be this film — so let's take a look at it!
Jason S. Martinko's The XXX Filmography, 1968-1988 is terse when it comes to the movie, saying: "At Faulk University, the humor is slapstick and childish. Both the jokes and sex scenes leave much to be desired. Director David Worth (as Sven Conrad) also worked as the writer, cinematographer and film editor. It's also known as I Ata Pie and National Lamporn's Frat House." 
After working a few years as a cinematographer of now-forgotten no-budget stuff with great titles like 101 Acts of Love (1971), Is There Sex After Marriage (1973), Adultery for Fun & Profit (1971) and Marriage and Other Four Letter Words (1974 / 68 very slow NSFW minutes in French), David Worth made his co-directorial debut the year prior to Frat House with the culty horror movie Poor Pretty Eddie aka Redneck County (1975), featuring the great Shelley Winters in fine nuthouse form and Leslie Uggams as the woman in danger. The movie did not jump start his career, so to pay the rent he continued to do an occasional porn film as "Sven Conrad", none of which enjoy a lasting reputation.
Trailer to David Worth's
Poor Pretty Eddie:
Under his real name, David Worth has since carved a nice niche as a B-movie cinematographer and occasional director of primarily straight-to-DVD fare featuring has-beens, slumming second-tier or cult character actors, and loads of unknown foreign names; among the many fun and not-so-fun B and Z-films he directed are: Warrior of the Lost World (1983 / see below), Soldier's Revenge (1986 / trailer), Kickboxer (1989 / trailer) Lady Dragon I (1992 / trailer) & II (1993), True Vengeance (1997 / trailer) and, most recently House at the End of the Drive (2014 / trailer) and Hazard Jack (2014 / trailer).
Trailer to David Worth's
Warrior of the Lost World (1983):

VidXpress has the plot: "It's the HOTTEST Frat at Faulk University, good ol' Faulk U! 'The guys back at the house want to live out all their fantasies before they graduate,' says one of the brothers in Frat House, thereby stating in a nutshell the theme of this hardcore laugh riot [...]. The I Phelta Thi fraternity certainly holds the record when it comes to goofing off. This particular group of guys never studies, seldom go to class and downright refuse to behave themselves. College is no place to further your education as far as they're concerned; this fraternity attends one class from morning till night — SEX EDUCATION. There is a constant battle among the I Phelta Thi guys to see how many girls they can pick up, how many times a day, and in how many different places. This comical epic comes to a head when the guys decide to throw a party at the Dean's house (John Boland [25 March 1937— 1 May 1986]) — and what a party this one is. Will the I Phelta Thi fraternity ever graduate? College is so much fun — do they want to graduate? For a rousing look at college life on the campus of Faulk University, see Frat House. Good ol' Faulk U will never be the same....and neither will you!"
Over at Pornonomy, Roger Feelbert gives the movie an A-; you can read the review here.



Heavenly Desire
(1979, dir. Jourdan Alexander [as Jaacov Jaacovi])

Scene:


"Baby, you're in the backseat of a Cadillac Brougham, that's as close to heaven as you're gonna get."
The Devil (Johnnie Keyes)

The film's tagline — "Get All the Heavenly Rewards Warren Beatty Had to Wait For"— reveals the then-current mainstream movie that inspired this once-forgotten, now re-appraised fuck-fest that was dusted off to be re-released as Seka's Heavenly Desire — The Lost Movie.
Heavenly Desire is a solo directorial project from the co-director of Dusty (1978), Jourdan Alexander. Born Yaacov Yaacovy on January 27, 1945, in Tel Aviv, Israel (and died September 24, 2008, in California), Jourdan Alexander — aka Jack Wolfe, Jacov Jaacovi, Jordan Alexander, Jaacov Jaacovi — seems to have entered porn in 1971 with the Western spoof A Fistful of 44s (1971); what he was doing between his last known direct-to-video movie, From China with Love (1994), and 2008, is unknown to us. Aside from featuring the not-yet-legendary porn star Seka, Heavenly Desire also features Johnny Harden aka Gene Carrier (seen below), and the popular Golden Age receptacles Serena and Hillary Summers — and, of course, Jamie Gillis (20 April 1943 — 19 Feb 2010), who seems to have been in every Golden Age porn film ever made.
This movie, like most of the X-rated movies looked at here in our Harry Novak career review, is one of many that, according to our on-line search at US Copyright Office (done 7 July 2014), Harry Novak, in the form of Valiant International Pictures, applied for a copyright to — as always, a good enough a reason for us to take a look at it.
The plot, according to Popcorn: "Two of adult film legendary leading ladies, the Platinum Princess Seka and the Siren of Sensuality Serena, headline the superb cast in this kinky, erotic 'deal with the devil' saga. This whimsical fable begins with the ladies playing good old 'dance hall whores' in the 1880s wild wild west where their lives are good — plenty of money, whiskey and horny cow hands — that is, until they get caught in the cross-hairs of an old-fashion shoot-out. Regaining consciousness sometime in the 1970s, they are confronted by a devilish Johnny Keyes who offers them a 'bargain'. They can continue their lascivious lifestyles enjoying endless sexual delights if they can prove they are completely unrepentant and deserving of his sinful presence. Keyes takes them to a sorority house where their challenge is to debauch the innocent coeds out of their virginity. Seka and Serena take on the task with unbridled abandon leading the naive girls into shameless and uncontrolled pleasure-seeking. When landlord, Jamie Gillis and his sex-craved secretary arrive to collect the lease payment, the scenario turns into total libido-driven mayhem."
Golden Sin Palace says "As I am not a big fan of Seka (I do not understand what was so special about her) my expectations were low. Luckily she is not the focus of the film and it's for the better. So the film focuses primarily on the two students and their boyfriend (Mike Ranger and Jon Martin). Aubrey Nichols, Eileen Wells and Liza Dwyer are also part of the female cast, Johnny Hardin has a dual role, rather amusing, and Jamie Gillis has a short role. [...] I found this movie rather enjoyable, but the final orgy is ridiculously long and badly filmed (which makes the scene rather boring). I am lucky enough to have a full version of this film, which is no longer available [...]. What has been cut [...] is a fisting scene between Serena and Eileen Wells & Dani Williams."
Elsewhere, rame.net calls Heavenly Desire"an ambitious film that mixes wild west and present day in a sometimes confusing plot that reminds this reviewer of a cheesy eighties teen film called School Spirit (see below). A laugh along (sometimes intentionally) sexvid [...]. Johnny Keyes looks the part as the Devil, dressed in pimp gear and wearing his trademark shark's teeth necklace. (He can't act though, nor can Seka.) Overall, A good 70s movie. Not the best, but well worth the rental [...]."
While it lasts, the full movie can be found at this NSFW website.
Trailer to
"a cheesy eighties teen film called School Spirit" (1985):

Ron Shy, aka Ron Ellington Shy, performed two songs he wrote especially for the movie, Heavenly Desire and Still We Made It; the Ron Ellington Shy Trio, which for awhile included the legendary bongo play Preston Epps, still performs today. We include this factoid only as a reason to include a song by Preston Epps...
Preston Eeps — Bong Rock:




Taxi Girls
(1979, writ. & dir. Jaacov Jaacovi)

Poster thanks to emovieposter. Another film by Jourdan Alexander (as Jaacov Jaacovi) which, like most of the X-rated movies looked at here and as according to our on-line search at US Copyright Office (done 7 July 2014), Harry Novak, in the form of Valiant International Pictures, applied for a copyright to — as always, a good enough a reason for us to take a look at it. Like the next film down, Johnny Does Paris, Taxi Girls was adapted as a comic book in the 1990s.
A "classic" roughie — well, comedy, up until close to the end — of the Golden Age of porn, Taxi Girls went on to spawn three direct-to-video sequels (Taxi Girls Part II: In Search of Toni [1986], Taxi Girls 3: Killer on the Loose [1993] and Taxi Girls #4: Daughter of Lust [1994]), all by Jaacov Jaacovi.
Like Heavenly Desire further above, the then-mandatory lesbian fisting scene has been cut from the DVD re-release. Taxi Girls enjoyed slight infamy when it came out 'cause Cheryl Ladd"won $1,000,000 when she sued the producers of the adult movie Taxi Girls because it advertised 'starring Cheryl Ladd look-alike Nancy Suiter'" (see above). One doubts they ever paid out. Cheryl Ladd, in case you've forgotten, was part of that memorable non-masterpiece, Millennium (1989 / see below).
Cheryl Ladd in
Millennium:

Over at rame.net, "CJ Lines" explains the movie's appeal: "One of those strange 70s oddities that, despite a few serious production flaws and a disorganized directorial style that's leagues below the 'de facto' standard of the era, has a special charm to it that's rendered it something of a cult classic these days. Not just that but it's also one of very few films to feature the legendary, now-elusive Nanci Suiter [pictured below, not from the film], a stunning blonde with impressive acting talents, an incredible capacity for blinding sex scenes and a slow, sultry drawl that just made every line of dialogue she delivered sound luscious and inviting."
Jason S. Martinko's The XXX Filmography, 1968-1988 supplies the plot: "Nancy Suiter plays a clever prostitute who comes up with the unique idea of operating a taxi service that offers some real service. She's able to get her fellow prostitutes off the streets and also rakes in some money, until some dangerous competition starts to take notice."
Over at imdb, A. Nonymous says "Nancy Suiter was a phenomenon in the porn industry. She burst onto the scene in a small part in The Ecstasy Girls (1979 / full movie), then burned up the screen over the next few years before disappearing. She was a petite but absolutely gorgeous blonde, who put everything she had — and then some — into a scene, and she quickly amassed legions of fans. Then, almost as quickly as she came into the business, she left it. Rumors have circulated for years that she married a multi-millionaire who insisted that she leave the business, other rumors say that she got involved with heroin and cocaine, fell in with the wrong crowd, descended into prostitution and overdosed, others that she was either killed in an accident or murdered by a boyfriend/lover/pimp. Since no one knew much about her when she got into the business, and she apparently told co-workers nothing about herself, her fate will no doubt remain a mystery. A shame, as she was a breath of fresh air in an increasingly stale business." For more on her disappearance, watch the clip below.
The Lost Girls of 70s Porno 
starring Nancy Suiter:




Johnny Does Paris
(1979, dir. Charles Webb)

Japanese poster further below compliments to emovieposter. Aka as Open Invitation and Extreme Close-Up; Johnny Does Paris was the title for the movie's 1981 re-release. This movie, oddly enough seeing how little known it is — there is no reliable film synopsis or review of note to be found on the web — was adapted as a comic book in 1997. As the pressbook above shows, Harry Novak (as in "Valiant International Pictures") distributed the re-release. The flick is yet one of many by director Charles Webb (aka Carlos DeSantos Chuck Angel, Charles De Santi, Charles De Santos, Charles DeSantos, Lowell Pickett), who at least in some of his early films truly tried to make "serious" (porn) movies. (See, for example, his 1971 movie Crazy Cool, which he directed as "Lowell Pickett".)
Extreme Close-Up / Johnny Does Paris was filmed in Paris as a Gloria Leonard (born Gale Sandra Klinetsky; 28 Aug 1940 — 3 Feb 2014) vehicle; according to the Italo website John Holmes Story, Holmes "traveled with Gloria Leonard to Paris in 1978 to make Johnny Does Paris. 'The day we met,' she relates, 'he had this diva attitude, so I said, "I'm sorry, my dear, but this set isn't large enough for two prima donnas." He was a baby, really, and an egomaniac.' (Playboy 3/98)" [...] "Gloria Leonard remembers the day in 1981 that John visited her at her home in Los Angeles. He looked skinny and seemed 'all cock.' By 9 AM, he'd already freebased three grams of coke. When the porn actress returned from an errand, she found Holmes gone, along with $25,000 worth of jewelry, electronics and guns."
The illegal download site Hot Spicy Downloads offers the following plot description: "Everyone hides a secret sexual desire, but most of us aren't brave enough to actually satisfy these deepest longings. But Laura Farr (Delania Raffino, aka Barbara Bills [8 March 1943 — 18 April 1995]) is a different breed. Bored with her humdrum marriage, Laura decides to travel to France in order to expand her sexual horizons. There, she befriends the mysterious Marguerite Heller (Gloria Leonard of, among many films good and bad, The Opening of Misty Beethoven [1976 / sountrack] and Maraschino Cherry [1978 / soundtrack remixed]), an erotic photographer with a tantalizing taste for the sensually unusual. Before long, Laura is led into a world of European sexual delights where fantasy merges with reality and where a willing woman can blossom in the hands of virile studs and lustful ladies alike. In the eye-opening climax, Laura comes face to face with her true sexual self in a very revealing Extreme Close-Up."
Over at the blog Wonderland, Jill C. Nelson, the author of Golden Goddesses: 25 Legendary Women of Classic Erotic Cinema, 1968-1985 offers some interesting trivia about the filming: "Leonard said [to me] that several people including cast and crew (about 22 in all) came down with the clap. They were on location in a small town at the time and had to go quietly in groups of two and three to the country doctor (so as not to alarm any of the locals) to acquire the antidote that was to be administered to the infected people. Holmes informed everyone he'd worked as a paramedic (technically, he had been employed as an ambulance driver) back in the '60s and offered to inject everyone with the cure, which he proceeded to do — including Leonard. She found it ironic."

To be continued ... next month.

Tank Girl (USA, 1995)

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Based on the comic character created by Jamie Hewlett and Alan Martin, this movie is one of those films that works much better on video than it ever did in the cinema when it first came out (and couldn't help but fail to meet fan-boy/girl expectations).
Supposedly the studios butchered director Rachel Talalay's final version of Tank Girl, re-editing it to fit what they thought the public wanted, so perhaps one shouldn't castigate Talalay too much for her seemingly weak control of the material. Still, she was never really all that memorable of a feature-movie director — her other big screen credits being the less than impressive Ghost in the Machine (1993 / trailer) and the 6th Nightmare on Elm Street film, Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare (1991 / trailer) — and definitely seems more at home on the small screen, where she has remained (very busy) since Tank Girl came out and, well, tanked.
Now, twenty years later, Tank Girl reminds one a bit of Michael Sarne's Myra Breckinridge (1970 / trailer), another big-budget period piece that works more in spite of itself than anything else. Even Talalay's annoying tendency to pad her film with snippets from the original Tank Girl comics recalls Sarne's technique in Myra Breckinridge of inter-cutting incongruent scenes from old Hollywood films — a technique that works better in Sarne's now enjoyably dated plane wreck of a movie.
Lori Petty, like Thora "Super Star" Birch an actress with personality long in search of a career — anyone ever see Bates Motel (1987 / trailer), Route 666 (2001 / trailer) or Cryptid (2006 / trailer)? — takes to her character like a fish takes to water. Perfectly cast as the ultimate party girl, a shaven-headed punkette with more oneliners than pubic hairs, she obviously loved making this film and that definitely helps carry the film. Seeing her in action leaves one happy that the long since forgotten but then hot young actress of the time, Emily Lloyd, was tossed from the project. In turn, to look at the next name of the time, Malcolm McDowell, who started his career as a counter-culture favorite in such movies as If... (1968 / trailer), A Clockwork Orange (1971 / trailer) and O Lucky Man! (1973 / trailer) before sliding into eternal pay-the-rent mundanity — Does he say "No" to anything? — recreates his cut-and-dried megalomaniac bad guy characterization that he has come to specialize in since he derailed his semi-mainstream career with Caligula (1980 / trailer). Neither good nor bad, McDowell simply fits the role, which can also be said of Ice-T (3000 Miles to Graceland* [2001] and Tara [2003]) as the mutant kangaroo T-Saint. Sure he's fun, but then, so are all the other mutant kangaroos; casting him had less to do with any stroke of brilliance than it did probably with the hope of free publicity (much the same reason John Waters cast Traci Lords in the Talalay-produced John Waters' film Cry Baby [1990 / trailer], a great film that lives and breathes novelty casting).
* For some strange reason, the review of this flick is the most-read review on this blog — and has been for at least four years.
 
The story of Tank Girl? Well, imagine a motor-mouthed, high-sexed Mad Max with a vagina driving a tank while drinking cocktails, who, between changing outfits, teams up with mutant kangaroos — "bohemians dedicated to sex, poetry and partying," according to The Washington Post — to fight Big Business. Years from now — 2033, to be exact — on a world in which Bruce Willis failed to stop Armageddon (1998 / trailer), the comet has long since crashed into the planet and left behind a scorched earth in which water is the most valuable commodity. Caught illegally siphoning water by the Water & Power Company, Big Bad Boss Kesslee (McDowell) has all Tank Girl's friends at her home base wiped out but, for some strange reason, takes her prisoner and forces her to work in the mines. She hooks up with Jet Girl (an at-the-time unknown Naomi Watts, of Undertaking Betty [2002]) and falls in love with a tank (thus becoming "Tank Girl") before the two babes both escape. Hearing that her favorite little girl Sam (Stacy Linn Ramsower) wasn't killed in the W&P's raid but was instead sent to a brothel, Tank Girl's maternal instincts kick in and she sets out to save the little girl, an action that leads to a fabulous Cole Porter sing-along dance routine, probably the highpoint of the film and an example of how hilariously off the wall the film could've been.
Were the action a success, the film would've been much too short and neither Tank Girl nor Jet Girl would've hooked up with the Rippers, the group of mutant kangaroos who first can't decide if they should kill the two or bonk them, but finally team up with them for the big showdown against Kesslee and the Water & Power Company — and a lot more weirdness that, oddly, often seems like weirdness-lite. Still, no film can be all bad when the main character tends to say such wonderfully politically incorrect things like "You gotta think about it like the first time you got laid. You gotta go: 'Daddy, are you sure this is right'?" (A joke that would surely no longer make the final cut of any movie made today.)
Tank Girl is not a particularly intelligent film, and falls flat on its face much too often, but it does have a spunk and liveliness that makes it oddly appealing — in no small part thanks to Lori Petty. Good for a go with a six-pack, junk food and some sinsemilla.

Short Film: Help! My Snowman Is Burning Down (USA, 1964)

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Here's quaint piece of Surrealism from the 1960s that once walked away with award nominations, including for an Oscar.  (Contrary to what is said all over the web, it did not win: it lost to Larry Sturhahn's Casals Conducts: 1964.) 
"An absurdist farce, with music by Gerry Mulligan and Bob Brookmeyer"; and, as the final credits of the short say, "The accident [...] was written produced and directed by CarsonDavidson." Davidson, as far as we can tell, though a productive filmmaker, only ever made one feature film: the unknown The Wrong Damn Film (1975),* starring Barry Bostwick.
In Help! My Snowman Is Burning Down, the gent in the hat is played by Bob Larkin, also found in bit parts from films ranging from Putney Swope (uncredited, 1969 / bouncing boobs & song) to Friday the 13th Part XI: Jason Lives (1986 / trailer I/ trailer II). The exotic dancer is played by Dian Robertson, about who we know nothing. Do you? Please let us know.
Over at Oddball Films, they explain the short as follows: "Help! My Snowman Is Burning Down stands out as wholly unique in the annals of Academy history, for no nominated film can stake a claim to being as truly experimental and immersively engaging as Carson Davidson’s surreal masterpiece, melding Magritte with Duchamp, but maintaining its own perverse American sense of humor."More cute than substantial, less meaningful than entertaining, Help! My Snowman Is Burning Down is a fun blast from the past that, at about 9 minutes in length, doesn't overstay its welcome.


*According to TV Guide: "This sophomoric satire on politics came out in the wake of Watergate. Badly bungled from beginning to end, the film received only a few showings before mercifully disappearing without a trace."

[Not Quite] 10 Best Films in 2014

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The rules haven't changed since 2009: the movies are not presented in any special order, they need not be "good" in the traditional sense of the word, and they need not necessarily be from 2014 — they need only to have been watched and written about in 2014 and, most importantly, they need to have been notable as an "enjoyable" cinematic experience, if only for the one time.
Still, it must be said, 2014 was Slim Pickens. Of the 63 blog entries, 12 were Short Films of the Month, which we always ignore when it comes to this list, as alone the fact that they were chosen to be presented means that they were at least for us an enjoyable cinematic experience. (Still, we would like to draw special attention to the Short Film of the Month for April 2014, Nightmare at Elm Manor[Great Britain, 1961 or 63], and the one for June 2014, Ernest and Bertram[USA, 2001].) The five Misc. Film Fun entries naturally also don't fall into consideration, as they clearly have little to do with a full movie or reviews, nor do the 20 R.I.P. Career Reviews entries.
That leaves only 27 blog entries and 27 actual movies to choose from, many of which are forgettable or crappy or just not good enough to list as one of the "Best of 2014"— The Phantom (1996), for example: sure we enjoyed it, but not enough to put it on this list; and even if Camel Spiders (2012) was enjoyable as a crappy film, it wasn't superlatively so and in no way belongs on this list.
Thus, for 2014, our list is shorter than normal: this year, for our yearly round-up of the previous year, we are happy to present — The Six Best Films in 2014.
Click on the titles to go to the original reviews. As always, presented in no particular order.
 



(Italy, 1978. Director: Ugo Liberatore)

As we said in the review, "Hard to believe that such a dull film can be so enthralling..."


The Hamiltons
(USA, 2006. Directors: "The Butcher Brothers")
"The Butcher Brothers" are otherwise known as the directors Mitchell Altieri and Phil Flores.
Trailer:



(France, 1973. Director: Jean Rollin)
If you don't know who Jean Rollin is or what his films are like, this art horror film is a good place to start as any.
Trailer:



Disaster
(USA, 2005. Director: Roy T. Wood)
100% prime stupidity, 100% fun.
Trailer:



Movies


The Wig / Gabal
(Korea, 2005. Director: Shin-yeon Won)
More scary hair from Asia, but unlike normal, not Japan but Korea. And unlike kimchi, a slow burn.
 Trailer:



(Italy, 1979. Director: Lucio Fulci)
A Fulci classic and must-see that lives up to its reputation. More on the fan-made poster above can be found here.
Theme Music to the Movie:




Special Mention —
The Worst Film Watched in 2014
(Denmark, 1995. Director: Martin Schmidt)
Not a movie, but total donkey doo on celluloid. We saw this film, so you don't have to.
Danish Trailer:

Der Schwarze Abt / The Black Abbot (Germany, 1963)

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Whether or not one views Der Schwarze Abt aka The Black Abbot as the 13th or 15th of the German post-war Wallace series depends how you look at it: two earlier Wallace films of the 15 to the date of this movie's release, Der Racher / The Avenger (1960 / German trailer) and Der Fluch der Gelben Schlange / The Curse of the Yellow Snake (1963 / German trailer), were not Horst Wendlendt Rialto productions; purists, therefore, do not count them as among the "real" German Wallace films, despite the fact that they also shared many of the same actors and, in the case of Der Schwarze Abtand Der Fluch der Gelben Schlange, the same director, Franz Josef Gottlieb (1 Nov 1930 — 23 July 2006).
We took a small look at Der Schwarze Abt last year in Part IIof our RIP career review of Joachim "Blacky" Fuchsberger, where we call it the 13th Wallace film. Recently we had the pleasure of re-watching it, and while it really wasn't quite as good as we remembered, we did enjoy it — as did our company that evening, who had last seen the movie around 30 years ago, when she was a wee lass much too young to even be described as prepubescent; she marveled greatly at the fact that once upon a time, the movie scared her poopless. It didn't now, and won't anyone — unless the viewer happens to be too young to even be described as prepubescent.
The Black Abbot is often claimed to be the first Wallace film to move away from straight crime and into the "Gothic", we would tend to disagree: Harald Reinl's Der Fälscher vonLondon(1961 / trailer), which shares the same castle as its setting — Schloss Herdringen as Chelford Manor (Abbot) or Longford Manor (Fälscher) — also moves well into the Gothic, possibly even more so due to the movie's Expressionistic touches and all the scenes of Jane (Karin Dor) running around darkened hallways in her white nightgown.
Between the two movies, we really must say that Reinl's film is the superior one, which isn't to say that the movie here doesn't have its high points, including an exceptionally effective Klaus Kinski as the two-face butler and a convincingly nutso Lord Harry Chelford (Dieter Borsche of Der Henker von London [1963 / trailer], Die toten Augen von London [1961 / English trailer] and Der Pfarrer von St. Pauli [1970 / TV trailer]).
Like all Wallace films, the plot is confusing and difficult to follow and pretty all over the place, but unlike so often in the series, the ridiculous aspects and the logical parts do jell to create a relatively comprehensible and linear plot, providing you listen closely. Hell, even the first murder gets explained, as does the whole subplot involving an old lady in black that shows up once or twice and a bearded man who pops up out of nowhere to steal documents from a secret passage. So listen carefully and you'll be able to follow the plot as well, despite all the characters that flit in and out and about the movie. (Red Herrings and too many characters are the salt and pepper of German krimis, after all.)
The two main threads around which the film is constructed and the bodies fall are, firstly, that of a lost hidden treasure at Chelford Manor and, secondly, the lead female Leslie Gine (Grit Boettcher of Der Mönch mit der Peitsche [1967 / German trailer] and [Der Tod im roten Jaguar 1968 / German trailer]), a relatively colorless and uninteresting woman that, for some odd reason, a variety of men are enamored with — including her arranged husband-to-be, the slightly unhinged Lord Harry Chelford (Dieter Borsche), who's also obsessed with finding the treasure, the crooked Fabian Gilder (Werner Peters, of the masterpiece of East German post-war cinema, Der Untertan aka The Kaiser's Lackey [1951 / German trailer]), and the possible good guy Dick Alford (Joachim Fuchsberger), who is reticent about his feelings as she is promised to his cousin Lord Harry Chelford, for whom he works as steward of the manor. Other figures of more and lesser importance slink around in the shadows of the castle, all pursuant of their own secret or not-so-secret agendas. Who is the good guy and who is the bad? For most of the movie you don't know, though you can be assured that, like the wet-rag lead female lead, the Scotland Yard Detective Puddler (Charles Regnier of A Study in Terror [1965 / trailer]) and his comic sidekick Horatio W. Smith (Eddi Arent) are good guys.
While an enjoyable Wallace, and perhaps even one of the better ones, The Black Abbot is a bit slow now then, visually and narratively. Some of the camerawork is rather inventive, if not humorous, but often enough it is also rather staid and stiffly blocked. Also, there is a lot of dialog in the movie: sometimes it seems as if all that really happens is that characters meet and talk, and then meet others and talk, and then re-meet again and talk. Nevertheless, there are a few murders and the big showdown in the cellar (if somewhat clumsy in how its staged) is fun enough and nicely ironic and is pretty good — though, as often is the case in the Wallace films featuring Eddie Arendt playing a dolt, he shows up to do a last gag which ruins the mood. Still, on the whole The Black Abbot is a fun and entertaining krimi and Wallace flick, and perfect for a rainy afternoon.
Director Franz Josef Gottlieb, by the way, was a highly prolific Austrian director. He followed The Black Abbott, his first Rialto Wallace film, with yet another Rialto Wallace film (Der Gruft mit dem Rätselschloß [1964 / German trailer]), a couple of Bryan Edgar Wallace films, a few Wallace imitations, an even larger number of dumb sex comedies, and a couple of low-brow classics, including the eternally entertaining Lady Dracula (1977 / German trailer).

Maximum Overdrive (USA, 1986)

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Today, over 25 years after the movie came out, the irony of the trailer still remains breathtaking: in it, when it comes to making a filmic adaptation of his work, Stephen King loudly proclaims that "If you want it done right, you have to do it yourself." And the final result? One of the worst-made Stephan King movies ever — a truly noteworthy feat, considering how many crappy King flicks there are out there.
Of course, since the day he foisted this mildly enjoyable if incredibly flawed turd upon the world, King has gone on record as having been totally coked out of his mind when he made the movie, which does indeed explain some of the flaws, especially the one that this movie shares with many of his verbose, mid-career Moby Dick wanna-be novels: despite always being best sellers, they (like this movie) tend to lose their direction amidst a plethora of unneeded, diffuse characters.
And too many characters this movie does indeed have: many, when they die, the viewer has a hard time even placing where they showed up earlier in the film, while others (including some that survive to sail off into the sunrise) are shallow stereotypes that are perhaps meant to be funny but are at best annoying or, at worst, offensive (the black guy killed by the game machines leads the list here). Much like too many cooks spoil the brew, too many characters dilute the movie.
Maximum Overdrive is based on the short story Trucks, which isn't even one of the best ones found in the compilation in which it appears, Night Shift. A simple tale focusing on a small group of people trapped in the diner of roadside gas station when a passing space cloud causes all machines to come alive and attack humanity. In the movie, once the starting situation is explained (and presented by a cheesy-looking green cloud surrounding a photo of the earth glued against a starry sky), the revolt of the machines kicks off with a laugh — with a "Fuck You" on a electronic bank sign and an ATM calling a dorky guy (Stephan King himself) an asshole — before segueing into two truly excellent scenes: the disorganized panic and destruction caused of a revolting drawbridge that opens by itself, and a kid's baseball game beset by killing machines. (The last features a great killer soda pop machine and a cement roller gone wild.)
These opening scenes, followed by the later extended scene of the lone surviving kid, Deke Keller (Holter Graham of Hairspray [1988 / trailer], Six Ways to Sunday [1997 / trailer] and The Curse [1999 / trailer]), wandering through a desolate suburbia full of death, destruction and machines out to kill, truly lead the viewer into believing that the film is going to be a good one — and that Stephan King might indeed have some talent as a director. True, too few killer machines seem to be out and about — there had to be a lot to kill as many people as they did, but we more or less only see one lawnmower and one ice-cream truck — but the scenes have a visual impact and work, which is the thing of importance.
Regrettably, Maximum Overdrive never again gets close to achieving the force or effectiveness of these first ten minutes and, throughout the rest of the movie, drags, annoys, bores, or flabbergasts in its general incompetency — at which point the viewer can't help but suddenly noticing all the flick's narrative inconsistencies, the biggest of which is that although it is inferred that all machines come alive (for example: the electric carving knife that attacks the waitress [Ellen McElduff] or, earlier and in passing, a hair-dryer that obviously strangled its user and a walkman that destroyed some poor sap's brain), too many don't: the cars of various characters, the motorboats in the harbor during the escape on water, virtually all the electronic gadgets at the diner, etc. etc. etc. Indeed, most of the time, aside for the trucks and M151 MUTT with a mounted machine gun, once the final group of humans has gathered together, the world is surprisingly empty of killer gadgets. And, hell, if pinball machines go homicidal, why don't the fucking ceiling lights? And what about the restaurant's radio? And, and — ah, hell: better not get started on that.
In the end, the true flaw of the movie is not the plot inconsistencies; it is the movie's inability to maintain enough tension to cover up the inconsistencies. Once the stereotypical Bible huckster (Christopher Murney of Barton Fink [1991 / trailer]) gets hit by the truck, Maximum Overdrive begins grinding its gears and quickly begins to instigate yawns. This flaw is aggravated by the fact that most of the characters are so one-note and uninteresting, while the few efforts to add character dimension — see: Bill Robinson's (Emilio Estevez) attempt to explain his youthful stupidity to the mandatory love interest Brett Graham (Laura Harrington of Midnight Cabaret [1990 / trailer]) — are oddly wooden and unconvincing. (In general, and in particular the tertiary characters such as the Bible huckster or hick bridesmaid Connie [Yeardley Smith], Maximum Overdrive reveals one of the biggest weaknesses of King's plethora of minor characters: on film, they tend to be shallow or exaggerated stereotypes, for unlike in his books they don't have untold pages of verbosity to tell the full who, what, when, where, why and how behind them.)
What the fuck, though, slagging this movie is a bit like whipping a dead horse since the little reputation it has is a bad one. So, to go ever slightly against the grain: although Maximum Overdrive is indeed a bad movie that need not be put on anyone's "Must See" list, it isn't 100% santorum-dripping elephant anus. The first ten minutes are really good, as are many of the special effects (those that have aged badly have at least become funny). Likewise, Deke Keller (the surviving kid) and one or two other characters — Handy (an underused Frankie Faison, of C.H.U.D. [1984 / trailer], Exterminator 2 [1984 / trailer] and For Sale by Owner [2009 / trailer]) and hillbilly Curtis (John Short) — actually overcome the one-dimensionality of their characters. And, furthermore, more than once King shows a creative eye in his camerawork, be it the visual composition of the shot, the use of foreground and background, or an effective if short dolly shot... given a film or two more, he might have developed some minor directorial skill.
Had Maximum Overdrive only been a bit more bloody, had it only been a bit more unremittedly trashy or sleazy, had it only had more bare skin (it has none), had it only been directed by a no-name, it might have been an acceptable if un-noteworthy trash film. As it is, however, it is only a lesson in how, much like when it comes to your plumbing repairs at home, "If you want it done right, don't do it yourself."
And, of course, how you should lay off the coke when making a movie — a lesson we actually thought already taught three years earlier when Vic Morrow and two kids lost their heads during the filming of the John Landis segment of The Twilight Zone (1983 / trailer).

R.I.P.: Harry Novak, Part XIV: 1980–86

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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 a year ago this month on 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 for Part VI: 1969
Go here for Part VII: 1970
Go here for Part VIII: 1971
Go here for Part IX: 1972
Go here for Part X: 1973
Go here for Part XI: 1974-75
Go here for Part XII: 1976-77
Go here for Part XIII: 1978-79



Sweet Surrender
(1980, dir. Dirk Milford)
As far as we can tell, the only movie "Dirk Milford" ever had anything to do with. Valiant International Pictures released the movie, according to Jason S. Martinko's The XXX Filmography, 1968-1988, which also offers a plot description: "York Madison (Roger Caine) has written a book about con-men who use elaborate schemes to have sex with young women. A female publisher (Tricia Ascot) is interested in selling his book and throws herself at him in her office. After she gets what she wanted, she tells York he's the one who’s been conned and he can shove his book."
Of the two leads, Tricia Ascot made one more film and disappeared, while  Roger Caine, a former Phili school teacher, can also be found in one George Romero's most depressing films, Martin (1976 / trailer below), as well as Doris Wishman's typically entertaining The Immoral Three (1975 / trailer) and her incoherently funny horror porno Come with Me My Love aka The Haunted Pussy (1976 / full NSFW movie). Michael Gaunt, who appears in the movie as the fast-talking photographer Michael Dayton, appears credited as "Perry Pirkanen" as one of the gravediggers in City of the Living Dead (1980).
Trailer to
Martin (1976):
At Pornonomy, Roger Feelbert rates the film a "C" and says "I'm going to hazard a guess that Mystery (that ridiculous 'pickup artist' douche) saw this movie when he was young and it served to shape his entire life and career. Granted, 'peacocking' isn't mentioned anywhere in the film, but the story is that an author is shopping a book of time-tested techniques for seducing women to a publisher. Predictably, the book's chapters are the film's hardcore scenes. (The structure of the film lends itself to being a clip recycler, but that doesn't seem to be the case.) The author claims the 'moves' are all legal, but a few — a man (Marc Valentine) pretends to be a doctor interviewing a new secretary (Merle Michaels); another man (Dave Ruby) pretends to be the manager of the Rolling Stones, convincing a fan (Samantha Fox of Doris Wishman's A Night to Dismember [1983 / full movie / trailer below] and Warrior Queen [1987]) to have sex with him in order to meet Mick Jagger — are ethically dubious. The best part of the film is the expository dialogue between the author and publisher. The script is obviously 'first draft' material [...] and the performances are earnest, but not... good. [...]"
Trailer to Doris Wishman's
A Night to Dismember (1983):



Sex Boat
(1980, writ. & dir. David I. Frazer & Svetlana)
Though a sex-heavy riff of Some Like It Hot (1959 / trailer), any similarities to the then-popular TV series The Love Boat (1977-87) is/was purely intentional.
The trailer to this movie is found on Harry Novak's Boxoffice Bonanza of Sexploitation Trailers Vol 3, thus its inclusion here. The directorial début of David I. Frazer, aka David Marsh, the husband of female porno filmmaker Svetlana Marsh; Svetlana already had 800 Fantasy Lane (1979) and Ultra Flesh (1980) under her belt by the time he began to point cameras at body parts in action. David & Svetlana have also done a few non-porn projects, too, like the unknown horror movie Stormswept (1995 / see below) and the equally unknown fantasy, The Lords of Magick (1989 / trailer). "According to Ginger Lynn, Svetlana was a 6-foot-tall blonde, who (at one time) was the gong girl on The Gong Show on TV"; she was also known for being a filmmaker who paid performers well but treated them like cattle.
David & Svetlana Marsh's
Stormswept (1995):

The plot, as found all over the web: "When wealthy husbands send their rich wives away to relax, they send them on a cruise. But this cruise is women-only. Even the ship's crew is all female. But when two young men (Turk Lyon [12 Aug 1947 — 12 Dec 1990] and Randy West) sneak aboard disguised as women, the all-girl getaway becomes a hilarious sex romp. This blockbuster sex comedy is wetter than the water around it. Starring beautiful Roxanne Potts as the ship's captain and eighteen luscious, mouth-watering centerfolds, the Sex Boat is calling you aboard."
Carnal Cinema says: "Svetlana is probably the most renowned female director of the Golden Age [...]. Sex Boat is a prime example of her winning formula — an energetic, screwball comedy boasting sumptuous locations and an all-star cast. It's not especially cerebral but it's popular nonetheless. The movie begins with an extended — in truth, rather extraneous — sequence in which Kevin James [who died of testicular cancer at the age of 35 on 24 January 1990] confronts his wife (Loni Sanders) and her lover (Mike Ranger) over their affair. Having witnessed his typically 'adult' revenge — he ties his wife to a tree and has sex with two nubile women in front of her — the main story begins to take shape. [...] Cue comedic shots of two broad-shouldered men in drag, walking somewhat awkwardly on high heels, boarding the ship under the cover of their none-too-convincing disguise. The middle third of the movie is really just the adventures of our amorous heroes and their increasingly accommodating shipmates. However, things do take a dramatic turn when the ship is boarded by a group of lusty pirates — complete with eye-patches and bandannas! Rest assured, two burly cross-dressers are on hand to save the day. Sex Boat is enjoyable fluff and frequently finds its way on to lists of the best Golden Age movies. [..] Sex Boat is totally inconsequential but shouldn't be dismissed for that. Svetlana's movies [...] manage to maintain a sunny, carefree tone despite featuring their fair share of kinkiness and coercion. They also benefit considerably from being beautifully photographed and blessed with reasonable budgets. The work at hand is typical of this winning formula. [...]"
Among the multitude of female flesh is that of Little Oral Annie, making her porn debut; born Andrea Parducci, she retired from the biz in around 1986, married musician Buddy Owen, had two children, went New Age and now lives in Bolinas, CA, where she is a music teacher in the Bolinas-Stinson Union School District. Far less happy an ending awaited another popular Golden Age actress found in Sex Boat, the beautiful, puffied Kandi Barbour (seen below at the age of 14): born Kandie Dotson in Russellville, Alabama, on 15 February 1959, she was found as a dead homeless woman on January 26, 2012, in San Francisco.



Hotline
(1980, dir. Anthony Spinelli)

Aka as Fantasmes a la carte— in France, where it got released as a "Burd Tranbaree" film, BT being the pseudonym used by Claude Bernard-Aubert for his pornographic productions. But according to most reliable sources, Anthony Spinelli made the film. It is yet another movie that our on-line search at the US Copyright Office (done 7 July 2014) revealed that Novak and Valiant International Pictures applied for a copyright to — good enough a reason for us to take a look at it.
Hotline (aka Hot Line) is one of Anthony Spinelli's less-known projects, and other than for illegal downloads, little can be found online relating to it. One thing for sure, it didn't star Lynda Carter.
Luckily, Jason S. Martinko's The XXX Filmography, 1968-1988 is there to supply a plot: "A blonde cocktail waitress named Jessie (Jesie St. James aka Debbie Rose, Jessica St. James, June Stock, Jessie St. James, Jesse St. James, Sara Jean) celebrates her 35th birthday with depression and booze. When she gets a call from her little sister Kathy (Nicole Black aka Nicole Noire, Nicole Noir, Jeanette James) describing an affair with a pro tennis player (Eric Stein aka Lee Grober, Steven Ventura, Michael Johnston, Roy Guerro, Eric David, Michael Johnson, Eric Duro), it sparks some fantasies leading to scenes from various sexual affairs of Jessie's life."
Anthony Spinelli [21 Feb 1927 — 29 May 2000] — born Samuel Weinstein, aka M Hastings, David Spelvin, L. Wilson, Sam Gibbs, George Spelvin, Anthony Spinnelli, Sam Weston, Wes Brown, Arvid Bellar, Leonard Burke, Jack Armstrong, Sybil Kidd, Wendy Lions, Eric von Letch and surely more names — is often called "one of the best adult filmmakers ever", a statement we are unfit to comment upon, though we do hope one day to see his 1973 movie, Suckula (available NSFW but cut at xhamster).
Hotline, by the way, was the first film written by "Valdesta", otherwise known as Jacqueline Giroux (seen above/below) or Jackie Giroux or Robin Whitting or Val Desta. As we mentioned in R.I.P.: Harry Reems, Part VII, she is a "cult-worthy bit-part-actress former wife of Steve Railsback (of Disturbing Behavior [1998] and Ed Gein [2000]) found — sometimes uncredited — in numerous fun flicks such as Trick or Treats (1982 / trailer), Summer Camp (1979 / trailer— which we actually caught in a theater when it came out), Drive-In Massacre (1977 / trailer below), C.B. Hustlers (1976 / scene), Ilsa: She Wolf of the SS (1975 / trailer), Video Vixens (1975 / trailer), Terror on the Beach (1973 / full film), Slaughter's Big Rip-Off (1973 / trailer), Prison Girls (1972 / trailer), The Erotic Adventures of Zorro (1972) and Sweet Sugar (1972 / trailer)."
 
Trailer to
Drive-In Massacre (1977):



Little Orphan Dusty II
(1981, dir. Jourdan Alexander)

Little Orphan Dusty (see Novak Part XIII) seems to have done well enough to warrant a sequel, which Jourdan Alexander foisted upon the breathlessly waiting public (Not!) in 1981, once again — if a smidgen subtler — using Rhonda Jo Petty "resemblance" to Farrah Fawcett (or "? ?") as a selling point.
John Holmes's dong is no longer around, replaced by that of the former graduate American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York (1967), Eric Edwards. One of his earliest film credits is Is There Sex After Death? (1971), in which, credited as "Robb Everett", he appears as a clinic patient.
Trailer to
Is There Sex After Death? (1971):
As with Little Orphan Dusty, our on-line search at the US Copyright Office (done 7 July 2014) reveals that Novak and Valiant International Pictures applied for a copyright to the movie — good enough a reason for us to take a look at it. Or to try to, at least: on-line, the poster is easy enough to find, but no one seems to have ever seen and written about the movie. Luckily, Jason S. Martinko's The XXX Filmography, 1968-1988 is there to supply a plot: "This follow-up to Little Orphan Dusty tries to tell a good story on a small budget, but doesn't quite make it. Someone is following and trying to kill Dusty (Rhonda Jo Petty). She takes comfort in the arms of Dr. Goldman (Michael Morrison [23 May 1946 — 22 Dec 2006, who is also found somewhere Crime Lords (1991 / scene from film below)]), and then John Perry (Eric Edwards). John visits the orphanage that Dusty grew up in and finds out that her mother is a rich old Hollywood movie star, Anna Harris (Angel Cash). It turns out that Anna's young lover (Kevin James as "Kevin Gibson") is trying to murder Dusty so she'll have no claim to her mother's inheritance."
Stupid Scene from
Crime Lords:
Among the names of those who did the music for Little Orphan Dusty II is one "Larry Hancock", and while we have our doubts that the two are the same person, there was a Larry Hancock (died: 3 January 2011) in the great and forgotten — if not simply unknown — Cleveland-based funk band, S.O.U.L. ("Sounds Of Unity and Love").
S.O.U.L. — Soul:




Skintight
(1981, dir. Ed De Priest& Alain Patrick)


"Tell me if it hurts....I won't stop, but tell me anyway."
Dr. Chambers (Paul Thomas) 

Thank you, emovieposter.com for the image above. Did Novak finger this movie? Dunno for sure, but over at AV Maniacs a dude lists it and a few other Something Weird porno flicks of the Bucky Goes to the Movies series as Novak releases, and as we know that some of the listed are indeed Novak flicks, we'll give this one here the benefit of doubt and include it — although, in truth, we couldn't find any other reference that tied the two together and have MAJOR doubts that Novak had anything to do with Skintight (aka Love Cures).
The plot, as given at the NSFW, incest-obsessed porn site Incezt.net: "ST is one of the more emotionally intense of the late Golden Age films, and does a fine job of combining sex with a sinister, edgy kind of Cronenberg mentality. Dr. Chambers (Paul Thomas) is the head of a sex therapy institute, and is cracking up. He is obsessed with therapist Samantha (Annette Haven), and in a series of recurring fantasies, he dreams of Miss Haven, dressed in skintight black leather, in a nightmare setting of shadowy sexual activity. Lisa (Lisa Deleuw) also inhabits this fantasy realm. Thomas is already in a bitter confused state because of unusual sexual problems with his wife, and when Haven (also the victim of Thomas' recurring obscene phone calls) leaves to get married [to "Tony", otherwise known as Randy West], Thomas snaps completely. [...]"
At Pornonomy, "Roger Feelbert" says: "The way the film (and it's seemingly contradictory tones) comes together in the end leaves me with two (seemingly contradictory) opinions: 1. The film is a hot mess that was put together on the fly (or there's a director's cut out there with an additional 30 minutes that makes sense from beginning to end); or 2. Skintight is a bit of auteur genius that has more in common with Cronenberg's Spider (2002 / trailer) or Herzog's Bad Lieutenant (2009 / trailer) than with Deep Throat (1972 / soundtrack) or even Behind the Green Door (1972). If it's the former, then I can at least say that it's worth checking out for a great opening credit sequence [...] and the film rates a C-. If it's the latter, though, Skintight is the most mind-bending adult film I've seen since the excellent Neon Nights (1981 / full NSFW movie) and rates an A."
Soundtrack to
Behind the Green Door:
The earliest film that we can find that involved Ed De Priest is Milton Blair's Safari (1967), which we looked at in our R.I.P Career Review of Paul Hunt and for which Priest did the cinematography. Often utilizing the pseudonym Hayes Dupree, De Priest wrote, directed or produced such (s)exploitive films as The Kill (1968), Blow the Man Down (1968), Hedonistic Pleasures (1969), One Million AC/DC (1969, written by Ed Wood Jr. / trailer), The Affairs of Aphrodite (1970), The Hard Road (1970), Six Women (1971), Midnight Intruders (1973), Love Games (1976), and Female Fever (1977); he already began dabbling with hardcore as the producer of Bob Chin's 1970 "white coater"The History of Pornography (1970) and finally moved into hardcore with Getting Off (1979).
Skintight was written and co-directed by Alain Patrick, who as an actor can be found in the David F. Friedman production Thar She Blows! (1968), Drum (1976 / trailer below), and Panama Red (1976 / first 5 minutes), one of Bob Chinn's few non-porn movies.
Trailer to
Drum (1976):
The original hard rock music for Skintight was composed and performed by Paul Sabu, the son of Sabu the Jungle Boy; he followed this, his début as composer, with the music to Hard Rock Zombies (1985 / trailer below), which Cracked.com rightly has on its list of The 5 Most Baffling Horror Movies From Around the World.
Trailer to
Hard Rock Zombies (1985):


 


The Seven Seductions of Madame Lau
(1981, dir. "Carlos DeSantos")

Aka The Seven Seductions. Yet another of a number of porn films by director Charles Webb (aka Carlos DeSantos Chuck Angel, Charles De Santi, Charles De Santos, Charles DeSantos, Lowell Pickett) that Harry Novak / Valiant International Pictures distributed (see the poster above), as they did Webb's earlier movies The Liberation of Honeydoll Jones (1977), Thoroughly Amorous Amy (1978) and Johnny Does Paris (1979). Webb was one of those who often tried to make "serious" porn, which generally meant a semblance of a plot and a depressing ending, and this flick here is one such project. (Some edits out there remove the final pan shot of the movie, thus emasculating the film's intended sucker punch.)
As DVD Drive-in says, when talking about quality smut of the Golden Age, "Many historians mark 1978 as the best year of Golden Age adult filmmaking, with the highest-quality output of the industry before and since, but 1981 was an equally important year, and was arguably the last really momentous year of the industry, seeing a good amount of classy, big-budget productions released to theaters, many of which could compete with Hollywood films of the period. Madame Lau is one of these."
As the original title (The Seven Seductions of Madame Lau) indicates, the inspiration of the plot is The 7 Faces of Doctor Lao (1964 / trailer below) — one can only assume that Madame Lau's serious tone has more to do with the book than the kiddy film. Like The 7 Faces of Doctor Lao, which features round-eyed Tony Randall playing an Asian, Madame Lau also features an obvious white chick in "Asian" make-up — be what it may, Annette Haven is at least a lot hotter looking than Tony Randall. One could, perhaps, object to the black-face sex scene, but how else should Annette Haven play a female version of Johnnie Keyes in Beyond the Green Door (1972)?  
Trailer to
The 7 Faces of Doctor Lao (1964):
The plot as found everywhere online is: "Christopher Hamilton (Richard Pacheco) is a wealthy and arrogant British playboy seeking the ultimate sexual experience. His quest eventually leads him to the mysterious sanctuary of Madame Lau (Annette Haven), an exotic oriental temptress endowed with mystical powers. She promises Christopher that he will find the gratification he seeks — but that the key to this treasured reward lies only within himself. Transforming herself into a host of beautiful women (Georgina Spelvin & Laura Lazare [as a silent "Farrah Fawcett" star] & Kay Parker), Madame Lau caters to Christopher's every whim, and soon he is ushered into an erotic world where his fantasies come to life in graphic detail."
Pacheco, born Howard Marc Gordon (aka Dewey Alexander, Mack Howard, Marc Howard, Mark Howard, Richard Pecheko, Norman Vain and McKinley Howard) was, as "Howie Gordon", Playgirl's Man of the Year for 1979; the pictorial proved a grower not a shower. (Nothing like a pleasant surprise!) He "retired" from the screen with the appearance of AIDS in the early 80s, and his last known screen appearance was in the 2010 documentary After Porn Ends, which is about life after being a porn actor.
Trailer to
After Porn Ends:
The film's novelty casting comes in the form of formerly well-known stripper Carol "Silicone" Doda, looking "like an ageing transvestite with fake boobs", along for the ride for some inappropriate comedy reaction shots and a soft-core sex scene — her presence, however, is made up for by that of Haven, the unjustly forgotten Laura Lazare and, of course Kay Parker.
Kay Parker as a Talking Head in the Mocumentary,
Dick Ho: Asian Male Porn Star (2006):


 


Young Doctors in Lust
(1982, dir. Darr Michaels)

Thanks again to emovieposter.com. In the case of this porno movie here, an on-line search at US Copyright Office (done 7 July 2014) reveals that Harry Novak and Valiant International Pictures applied for a copyright to it — good enough a reason for us to take a look at it.
Any similarities in the title to the previous year's hit comedy Young Doctors in Love (1982 / trailer below) is/was purely intentional, of course. Young Doctors in Lust was produced by Lawrence T. Cole, a man perhaps most famous for producing and directing the two short films in which Linda Lovelace made her screen début, Dogarama and Dog Fucker, both from 1971. Director "Darr Michaels" seems to have fallen off the face of the earth after a limited output of hand-helpers.
Trailer to
Young Doctors in Love (1982):
Over at Rame.net, in their list of "historically significant movies", they says this movie is "another one of those non-stop sex movies which seem to have been made with a lot of flair in the late 70s early 80s". Sex Fetish Form points out that the movie features "a plot you haven't seen before — oh, no, wait, you probably have. This fiery sexvid once again uses the old sex clinic story to tie its action together. Well, maybe we shouldn't be so dismissive of the plotline. After all, this one is from way back in 1982 when the sex clinic plot probably still seemed fresh. [...] Basically, the clinic specializes in treating women who have problems letting go during sex — they're too hung up to get truly into it. The docs at this clinic have some salacious ways to fix that kind of problem, though, as they do in scene after scene of highly charged sizzle."
 



Intimate Explosions
(1982, dir. Darr Michaels)

A mystery movie! An online search at US Copyright Office (done 7 July 2014) reveals that both Harry Novak and Valiant International Pictures applied for a copyright to it.
E-Movie Posters has a rare poster of the movie, but knows nothing about the movie ("If anyone knows more about this movie, please e-mail us and we will post it here"). The poster reveals it as a movie "edited and directed by" Darr Michaels, produced by Lawrence T. "Dogarama" Cole, and written by "Marschall Duran" who, like "Bella A Howell", is a name that goes nowhere. It isn't listed at imdb, and even Jason S. Martinko's The XXX Filmography, 1968-1988 is of no help, saying little more than "This obscure movie was directed by Darr Michaels in 1982."
Intimate Explosions seems to share all the same receptacles and protein fountains as the equally obscure porno Exhibitionists (1982), but that could mean nothing. Anyone out there know anything about either movie?



Inspirations
(1982, dir. Harry H. Novak, as "H. Hershey")


Thanks again to emovieposter.com. It is an accepted fact that Novak directed this movie, one of only two where he receives credit, if only pseudonymously ("H. Hershey" also did Moments of Love, which we look at later). Some sources, however, claim that the movies co-producer Joe Sherman is the director of both movies. In any event, Mutt and Jeff did the editing, and Otto Focus the cinematography.
The plot, according to the DVD back cover: "Feast your eyes on a carnal cornucopia of lust-filled erotic Inspirations, featuring a sizzling superstar cast. Ron Jeremy plays a down-and-out doctor who recalls his horny hobby, secretly filming his sex-crazed patients in action. Saucy Serena is first to reveal her kinky fulfillment with two torrid transvestites. Then, an Indian swami slips the salami to delicious Danielle (and you thought the curry was hot!). Luscious Lisa De Leeuw hits new heights of daring debauchery, while Mai Lin gives her all in an outrageous display of oriental orality. Expect many more frantic frolics from the gals who need very little erotic encouragement!"
Lisa De Leeuw, born Lisa Trego, in Moline, Illinois 3 July 1958, supposedly died of AIDS-related complications on 11 November 1993. According to this facebook page ("A life lived without boundries [sic], apologies or excuses"), Danielle (aka Danelle, Dannielle, Melody, Martin Danielles, Martin Danielle, Danielle Martin), born Tracy Danielle Martin on 03 April 1962 — that's her above — died as Tracy Danielle Martin-Watson on 30 November 2011. Ron Jeremy, on the other hand, is still around despite looking half dead; some of his relatively recent non-porn films — Andre the Butcher (2005 / trailer) and One-Eyed Monster (2008) — are on our "Watch When We're Stoned" List.
Trailer to
One-Eyed Monster (2008):


 


Valley Wives
(1983 Darr Michaels)

Aka Cheating Wives. Another obscure porno film directed by Michaels — his last directorial job, as far as we can tell — that, according to an on-line search at US Copyright Office (done 7 July 2014),  Harry Novak and Valiant International Pictures applied for a copyright to.
The only "plot" description we could find anywhere was at ericaboyer.net, which says: "A young executive hires a PI to get the goods on all the execs above him in the company, and what their wives are doing as well." Among the wives is one played by Rita Ricardo, the real-life wife of director Charles Webb (see: Johnny Does Paris [1979], Thoroughly Amorous Amy [1978], The Liberation of Honeydoll Jones [1977] and The Seven Seductions of Madame Lau [1981]). Another wife is played by "early anal queen"Lili Marlene
Angelo "The Italian Superstallion" Rivera was out of porn within two years — or at least changed his name.



Fantasex Island
(1983, writ & dir. Lawrence "Dogarama" T. Cole)

 
Needless to say, any resemblance to the once-popular TV series Fantasy Island (1977–1984) is purely intentional. This movie, like so many of the X-rated productions looked at here, is another one that an on-line search at US Copyright Office (done 7 July 2014) reveals a copyright request by Harry Novak and Valiant International Pictures — good enough a reason for us to take a look at it. For this film, producer Lawrence "Dogarama" T. Cole (born "Robert Wolfe") took over the scriptwriting and direction.
The NSFW website Hot Movies has a plot description: "Visit Fantasex Island, where guests have their most secret sexual fantasies fulfilled with lustful pleasure! Meet your Fantasex Island guides: Dork (Pepe Peru), a Latin gentleman and his lascivious midget, Pu-Pu (Luis De Jesus [30 June 1952 — 27 July 1988], credited as "Mr. Short Studd"). Mr. Dork and Pu-Pu make certain each exotic fantasy is carried completely to its wildest limits. A hard-riding cowboy who rustles up a saloon girl and takes her for a hard and fast sex ride — a Victorian gentleman and the willing maid showing the proprietors a thing or two about boudoir antics — a young male student teaching his modest etiquette teacher the manners of lustful and raw sex — a gambler who must settle his debts with his virginal sister offered as payment to the owners of a house of ill repute — a blushing, innocent bride who discovers her husband's kinky ideas of marital bliss on their honeymoon night — an oversexed maid who is pleasantly controlled by the lord and lady of the manor. Poor frustrated Pu-Pu, 10 years of Fantasex Island and still no action."
Among the working moaners and groaners: an unknown David Morris, born 9 January 1952, who, after almost 20 years in the industry ODed in Florida on 21 May 1999, and Juliet "Aunt Peg" Anderson (23 July 1938 — 11 Jan 2010), who once claimed that she never had to fake an orgasm in any of her films.
Of the island's hosts, Luis De Jesus (aka Mr. Short Studd, Mr. Shortstud, Short Studd, Louie Short Stud, Mr. Short Stud, Louis Shortstud, Little Louis) has the honor of being one of the earliest (at 4 feet, 3 inches [130 cm]) vertically challenged actors to spew cream onscreen when he began his career in the 1971 short film, The Anal Dwarf, co-starring Veri Knotty, which he followed with an important role in Gerard Damiano's muppet-porn feature Let My Puppets Come (1976 / fan trailer / credit sequence). Luis De Jesus even made it into an occasional non-porn flick, like Chuck Vincent's failed attempt at mainstream comedy, American Tickler (1977 / first 8.42 minutes) and the Chevy Chase vehicle Under the Rainbow (1981 / typically unfunny scene), but his true claim to ever-lasting fame comes from that classic grindhouse cult favorite, The Incredible Torture Show aka Blood Sucking Freaks (1976).
Trailer to
Blood Sucking Freaks:


 


That's My Daughter
(1983, dir. Charles Webb)

Aka In Search of Angel, the movie is a hardcore "satire" of Paul Schrader's morality tale, Hardcore (1979 / trailer). As the original poster reveals, it was a Valiant International (aka Harry Novak) picture. Screenplay by "George Kale", who hasn't been heard of since.
Over at Incest Erotica, as might be expected they give a description of every incestuous scene of the movie — which involves a Daddy and a Step Daddy (John Leslie [25 Jan 1945 — 5 Dec 2010]) — but we'll take the less-detailed account found at the falsely named Celebrity Nude Database: "Harry (Pat Moorehead), a business man while screwing glances up at the porno playing and see's his daughter (Karen Sweet) starring in it. So he hires a private detective (Eric Edwards) to find her for him. So the detective and Angel, his secretary (Sharon Mitchell) go about finding her. [...] The ending didn't make a lick of sense. For porn from the 'Golden Age' of the genre, this one was a letdown."
Dr. Sharon Mitchell — she received a Ph.D. from the unaccredited, San Francisco-based Institute for Advanced Study of Human Sexuality — has also appeared in an occasional non-porn project, such as Maniac (1980 / trailer), Night of the Juggler (1980 / full movie) and Class of Nuke 'Em High Part II: Subhumanoid Meltdown (1991 / full movie). Once-popular, now-forgotten starlet Arcadia "Backdoor Brunette" Lake appears un-credited in the movie as Leslie; possibly born Michelle M. Carpenter on 3 September 1957 and best known-best known for her portrayal of Tammy in the 1978 film Debbie Does Dallas, she supposedly died of an accidental drug overdose on 13 September 1990.
Class of Nuke 'Em High Part 2 Theme Song:



Moments of Love
(1983, dir. Harry Novak as "H. Hershey")


Over at Critical Condition, it is claimed that "the last known film that Novak was directly involved with was Moment of Love"— this movie here. An arguable statement, but it does seem to be the last movie he is known to have directed.
According to one on-line source, "The John Holmes credit is a scam… there is a John Holmes video on in the background!" Likewise, despite what the DVD cover looks like, Mai Lin is a minor character in this Nicole Black vehicle." (*Sigh* — Nicole Black [aka Nicole Noire, Nicole Noir, and Jeanette James]: whatever happened to her anyways?)
Over at imdb, Anonymous offers a usable plot description: "With Dr. Prober (Ron Jeremy) occupied with buxom Nurse Marnie (Lisa De Leeuw), Tisa Williams (Nicole Black) naps in the waiting room, prompting a fellow patient to take advantage of her hand and breasts. Dr. Prober then tells Tisa she's dying. After an encounter with her female roommate (Mai Lin), Tisa decides to spend her remaining days as a prostitute and write a book about it. Dr. Prober fails reaching Tisa to tell her he gave her the wrong results, until he reads about her whereabouts in a porn magazine. Though angered at first, Tisa admits her experiences provided her a best seller. Nevertheless, she fears the good news would make her readers feel cheated. Therefore, Dr. Prober agrees to announce in a press conference that he just managed to find her a cure. Tisa then receives special treatment by both Dr. Prober and buxom Nurse Marnie, before Dr. Prober steps outside his room to announce to the waiting press that the cure worked."
At rame.net, "The Fool" (fool@the-idiot.com) once wrote: "Moments of Love looks like a very, very late 'drive-in' movie. This video has all the explicit sex, but you can tell where the edit points were to remove the hardcore footage.  Ron Jeremy looks nice, so I was tempted to put the actual date of this film as 1981. [...] This film has just about everything for everybody, but it's rationed out."



Down and Dirty
(1985, dir.  Charles Webb [as Charles DeSantos])

A worthless direct-to-video masturbatory aid that an on-line search at Copyright Encyclopedia reveals that Harry Novak applied for a copyright to it — good enough a reason for us to take a look at it.
The iafd(internet adult film database), just like Jason S. Martinko in The XXX Filmography, 1968-1988, says "The whole movie is just a single orgy, starting with Candy Samples, Janey Robbins and Jon Martin. Then Ashley Welles, John Holmes, Lili Marlene, Mike Horner and Don Fernando show up one by one."
Candy Samples has had credited and uncredited roles in many a fun film — among others: Prison Girls (1972 / trailer), Saddle Tramp Women (1972), Bust Out aka Convicts Women (1973 [see: Part X]), Flesh Gordon (1974 / trailer) Superchick (1973 / see below), the odd time capsule Female Chauvinists (1976 / scene) and two lesser Russ Meyer movies, Up! (1976) and Beneath the Valley of the Ultra-Vixens (1979 / trailer) — but Down and Dirty here isn't one of them. 
By the way, we saw part of this Down and Dirty online and went gay for a week, so you know it isn't worth seeking out.
Trailer to
Superchick (1973):

Superchick (1973)von bmoviebabe




Come Get Me
(1986, dir.  Charles Webb [as Charles DeSantos])

We can't help but think of TS Elliot and say "This is the way the world ends, not with a bang but a whimper".
Aka Chain Bang and If You Want Come and Get Me, this is the last movie we could find that we could connect to Harry Novak, the producer. An uninteresting straight-to-video hand helper, a search of the US Copyright Office (done 7 July 2014) reveals a copyright request Valiant International Pictures (aka Harry Novak), so we more or less have to include it here. It is the second-to-last "real" film featuring the once-beautiful Kandi Barbour (seen above from the film, and below not) who, after her next film, Blowing Your Mind (1984), retired to obscurity and a tragic end as a dead homeless woman on January 26, 2012, in San Francisco.
Over at imdb, the Canadian aialaopele (who finds the movie "morbid rather than erotic") supplies the only review of the hand-helper that we could find anywhere: "If you are familiar with P.T. Andersen's Boogie Nights (1997 / trailer), you will remember that he choose '83 as the year the characters in his film hit the skids. I wouldn't be surprised if he had seen Come Get Me and based the chronology of his story on the film in review. [...] This was a vanity porn film produced by coke dealers who perhaps wanted to meet some porn stars, or show-off their houses, whatever. That this was committed to film instead of video is testament to the fact that someone had money to burn. What there is of a storyline is based on Kandi Barbour's character and her boyfriend's relationship is on the rocks and the boyfriend is about to leave her. She gives him the option to think it over and if he wants to maintain the relationship to 'come get her' at her girlfriend's, Jennfer West's, house where she will be staying. While waiting at this house, we are privy (or not!) to witness a number of sexual encounters involving the assorted people who are passing-by to visit. [...] Sadly, both Jennifer West and Kandi Barbour are not looking their best in this film. They are both overweight and spent more time using their hands to hide the unattractive parts of their bodies rather than grope their partners. The puffies for which Kandi Barbour is famous have been eclipsed with fat! In the scene where she is partnered with Jennifer West, she looks lost in a haze. This film can only be viewed as evidence in a cautionary tale about real life Icarian flights in a fantasy world that is the porn industry."
Jennifer West (aka Susan Young, Sally Ballgargle, Jenniffer West, Sally Sag, Tina Ross, C.C. Malone, Cece Malone, Sally Swift) did an occasional mini-appearance in non-porn "movies" such as Auditions (1978), the absolutely psychotronic Night of the Demon (1980 / full movie), where after some badly dubbed moaning she meets her end in a van, and the hilarious Hell Squad (1986 / trailer).
Trailer to
Night of the Demon:


To be continued ... one day.

Short Film: Love & Theft (Germany, 2010)

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"And I'm still carrying the gift you gave,
It's a part of me now, it's been cherished and saved,
It'll be with me unto the grave
And then unto eternity.
"
(Bob Dylan)

OK, were the music from an actual band, we would be tempted to simply dismiss this hypnotic short as an exceptionally unique music video (not that a music video can't also be a short film with narrative — see this one here by Die Fanta 4). More than anything, however, Love & Theft is a mesmerizing exercise of merging animation with rhythm. (The great music is from Heiko Maile.) 
Love & Theft was written and directed and animated by Andreas Hykade, the twisted mind behind the equally rhythmic and odd animated Freudian cowboy short Ring of Fire (2000), our Short Film of the Month for March 2011. Among the many metamorphosing faces down in a style that promptly brings to mind Jim Woodring's Frank: Betty Boop, Mickey Mouse, Spider-man, Adolf H., Droopy Dog, and KoKo the Clown, to name but a few. We don't see much content or story in this surreal short, but for that we want to watch it again and again and again.
Like that? The check out these other Short Films of the Month: Muzorama(Dec 2011) and Kunstbar(Sept 2011). Or Cyriak's cows & cows & cows(2010) or Baaa!(2011), neither of which we would want to watch on acid.

The Red Monks / I Frati Rossi (Italy, 1988)

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(Spoilers) Also known, in Germany, as Sexorgien der roten Mönche, which literally translates into the truly inviting title, Sex Orgies of the Red Monks— and a misleading title, as there is nary an orgy anywhere in the movie.
One rumor has it that Lucio Fulci was given the flick's "Presents" credit because he was pulled from The Red Monks as director and replaced by the flick's screenwriter, Gianni Martucci. Another rumor has it that Fulci had absolutely nothing to do with the movie and even went to court, unsuccessfully, to get his name removed from the film. What is not rumor is that with this movie, Gianni Martucci seems to have capped his less-than-spectacular career as screenwriter cum director with a less-than-spectacular piece of sub-standard Italo-trash. We would hazard to guess that had Fulci actually directed the movie, it surely would've been far better than it is now, but even he probably wouldn't have been able to save this wanna-be Gothic horror film that screams "Cheap! Cheap! Cheap!" just as loudly as it screams "Incompetent scriptwriter"!
Which isn't to say that somewhere within the diffuse, confused and scattershot period movie — it is set mostly in the 1930s — there aren't the gossamer threads of an interesting narrative that could've (perhaps) made a good horror movie, Gothic or not. But for that to happen, far more care must be shown to the simplest of movie-making aspects — beginning with a story that makes sense.
The plot is almost tritely (and thus enjoyably) Gothic: a young woman of no special means marries a rich man and moves into his castle, where suddenly he begins to act strange, people die, she experiences unexplainable events, and doom seems to loom as she runs around at night in her long white nightgown. But the plot, if you get down to it, is a farce that neither remains true to itself nor the viewer, and cheats on levels that reveal either a deep disrespect for the audience, a total indifference in general, or a total lack of screenwriting skills.
One can't really talk about The Red Monkswithout giving away the big plot twist, but the plot twist itself is one of many things that help ruin the movie, as it makes the opening interlude impossible, ridiculous, stupid — simply for the reason that the ending of the movie would mean that the opening interlude would be impossible, as by the end of the movie, all the chance of heirs no longer exists. But then, the opening interlude also feels totally tacked on, as if it were added simply to pad the running time, plot of the real movie be damned.
And what happens during the opening interlude? After a meeting a violin-playing woman (who obviously stumbled in from another movie and never shows up again later) in the gardens of the estate he has just inherited, a man wanders through the dilapidated house only to spy a naked women strolling through the ruins; following her through the house and deep into the cellars, when he finally catches up with her, he hardly has time to say "Hello, nice tits" before she beheads him. And then, to the subtitle "50 years earlier", the real movie begins — and ends with the death of the last line in the family, thus making the heir of the opening film impossible. (And that is the smallest of the obvious flaws of the story.)
The production values of The Red Monks resembles those of a mid-budget TV movie, one with lots of tits but an overly streamlined narrative (the male and female leads meet and marry within minutes, for example). Care is taken for beautiful period cars, locations, and half-way decent outfits, but saved on special effects and gore. The acting is all over the place: the two lead females — penniless painter and eventual wife Ramona Curtis (Lara Wendel of Killing Birds[1987 / trailer] and Tenebre [1982 / trailer]) and MILF housekeeper Pricilla (Malisa Longo of Elsa Fräulein SS aka Captive Women4 aka Fräuline Kitty [1977 / trailer], A Cat in the Brain [1990 / trailer] and the trash classic War of the Robots [1978 / full movie]) — do rather well, but the lead male  — rich landowner Robert Garlini (Gerardo Amato of Caligula[1979 / trailer] and Notturno con grida [1981 / title track]) — and the tertiary characters of importance, like the French housemaid Lucille (Mary Maxwell) and the period-pimp-looking dude, are thespian disasters.
Likewise, the use of the same actor (Claudio Pacifico of the recent turkey, Dead of the Nite [2013 / trailer]) to play a living historian and then a royalty of centuries past is also more than jarring, as the two don't have anything in common — or do they? And what's with that cheesy-looking spider that pops up twice but has nothing to do with anything — or does it? Lastly, there is an aspect of the plot that pops up twice that is simply repugnant by modern standards: rape is the way to a woman's heart. Did people really still believe that in 1988? (OK, maybe in Italy; in the US, however, by 1988 rape may still have been the woman's fault, but no one really believed anymore that it was the way to her heart.)
That aside, all the female nudity of the movie, courtesy Lara Wendel and Malisa Longo, remains the most interesting aspect of the entire movie. (Indeed, we're startled to realize that delicious Lara Wendel of this flick is the same oddly unappealing and frumpy Lara Wendel of Ghosthouse[1988], a film she made the same year as The Red Monks.) However, what should be actually be the most interesting aspect — that those you think are "good", are actually "bad", while those you think are "bad", are actually "good"— is handled so incompetently that it also becomes the movie's most annoyingly grating aspect. The switch-a-roo is so jarringly out of place, so unbelievable on all levels, that it becomes less a twist than simply stupid.
The Red Monks: nice cars, nice butts and breasts, nice scenery, but incompetently made, dull, uninteresting, and ultimately a both unsatisfying and annoying cinematic experience. There are better bad films out there to waste your time on. The Red Monks is a true rarity — it's a film that makes you wish you were at work.

Zombie Apocalypse (2011, USA)

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Another movie — like Rise of the Zombies (2012) and Zombie Massacre(2013) — that, much like drawing straws, we simply pulled from the some multiple dozens of zombie flicks in the "Zombie Movies" folder on our pal's computer. And as we found out later, Zombie Apocalypse is even directed by the same man (Nick Lyon) who later made Rise of the Zombies(2012), which is also a TV film from The Asylum but, in all truth, is a lot worse than this sloppily diapered baby here.
In Zombie Apocalypse, for all its flaws, the post-apocalyptic world is presented a lot more effectively and with greater care — indeed, we only saw one scene in which cars were still being driven in the background despite the facts that: 1) EMP (electromagnetic pulse) bombs had been dropped at the start of the movie, and 2) zombies don't drive. The script is a bit less cookie-cutter in nature than in Rise and, aside from the basic group-of-survivors-looking-for-a-safe-haven premise common of most zombie flicks, its only truly obvious pilferings are its samurai-wielding babe of minority background (delectable Lesley-Ann Brandt as Cassie, seen below not from the movie), its guilt-ridden leader (Gary Weeks as Mack),* and its arrow-shooters — one and all taken from The Walking Dead.
 
*Luckily, however, the movie doesn't spend too much time on the leader's sense of guilt for all those who have died while under way.
Zombie Apocalypse is a bit low on the known names phoning in a rent-paying performance, the only truly familiar face (to us  and/or at the time of its filming) being Ving Rhames doing his typically stoic man's man, named Henry, whose favorite weapon for dealing with zombies is a sledge hammer. For that, it is one of the rare Asylum films to have a face that has gone on to do bigger things: Ramona, the whiny blonde that you hope will die but who never does, is played by Taryn Manning, seen below not from the movie, who has gained some recognition in the US at least for her stints on Hawaii 5-0 and Orange Is the New Black. In any event, the acting in the movie can't be really be criticized: everyone does well enough, and since an inordinate amount of time is spent on character development, you sort of get to like a couple of them.
Ramona (Manning) is one of the first characters to be introduced in Zombie Apocalypse, one of three friends that at the outbreak of the virus took refuge in a mountain cabin and, weeks later, are forced to return to the ruins of civilization in search for food. Of course, being as stupid as they are hungry, they make way too much noise trying to get at a few candy bars and are attacked by zombies, which means the early departure of the non-character Kevin (Gerald Webb, who is supposedly seen somewhere in Camel Spiders [2012]). Luckily Henry, Mack, Romona and Julien (Johnny Pacar) show up to save Romona and the dude with hipster bad hair (Eddie Steeples as "Billy"), and the rest of the film is spent following the rag-tag group of survivors as they make their way to the coast of San Pedro in the hope of catching a legendary ferry to the legendary island of survivors, Catalina Island. (How the ferry should work after all the EMPs at the start of the film is never broached in the movie.)
Even before the housing-market meltdown a few years ago, Los Angeles had more than enough deserted housing projects perfect for a movie like this: the abandoned and overgrown housing estates work well representing a world gone dead. (For comparison of such abandoned projects, now to earlier days, take a gander at the old non-zombie exploiter, Suburbia[1984 / trailer].) In general — and unlike Lyon's follow-up Rise of the Zombies Zombie Apocalypse exploits its urban locations well, whether a strip mall or downtown Los Angeles, and this does a lot to make the movie work. It's a shame the script just wasn't a bit tighter, and the abundant CGI a little better. There's a scene involving a machine gun, for example, that totally forgets that the gun was left blocks behind the good guys trapped in the house, and the whole bit in the deserted high-school "safe haven" defies normal intelligence — really: you know it's a zombie apocalypse, but you wander around a body-strewn "safe haven" yelling "Hello? Anyone alive here?" until the hoards of un-dead come running? Makes you wonder how any of them got as far as they did in the first place. Also, we can't help but notice the scriptwriters' fascination with certain bodily functions: first, the need to pee is used for some character and friendship building between the ladies, and another character later meets his end basically because he's obsessed with finally being able to sit down on a toilet (in this case, a Johnny-on-the-Spot). Did a German write the script?
Zombie Apocalypse does briefly touch upon three things seldom seen in other zombie movies, all new concepts of varying viability for future inclusion in the zombie cannon. The most interesting one is that the zombies are getting more intelligent as time goes on, to the point of setting traps or running at the sight of guns.* (The development of intelligence, however, is uneven, so if the zombies run from guns in one scene, they don't in the next.)
*OK, one finds this in Romero's later movies as well, but I can't remember if they go as far as to set traps. 
Of less viability is the concept that the zombie virus can spring over onto animals. It is not without reason that, in 28 Days Later (2002 / trailer), the concept of the virus affecting animals was quickly dropped after the opening scene with the chimpanzee: there are too many animals in the world. Shit, even if the legendary number of one rat to every person is a myth, think about how many animals there are to every person — we'd have the chance of a snowball in hell, even if only mammals were susceptible to the virus. (Thus, as far as we are concerned, it is an idea best dropped now.) In any event, the latter "new" aspect is the basis of the big final scene and required  Hemingwayesque sacrifice of a character, a scene marred by crappy CGI.
The last new aspect is one also seen and mentioned in Silent Night, Zombie Night(2009): not all zombies are created equal — in ZA, there are the normal shambling dead and "runners". As there is a direct reference to this difference in ZA, unlike inNick Lyon's follow-up zombie flick, Rise of the Zombies— in which all zombies are obviously likewise not created equal — the zombies of varying speeds don't come across as a directorial oversight. As a result, the mixing of the classic shambler with the modern speedster doesn't jar all that much.
We enjoyed director's Lyon's later Rise of the Zombies for what it was: a laughably crappy movie. Zombie Apocalypse, however, is a bit less easy to simply dismiss as crappy. It may not really be a good movie — it has way too many flaws to be anything more than second rate — but is also not really a laughably terrible movie: for all the balls it drops, it also catches too many to simply be dismissed as a lost cause or hilarious example of bad filmmaking. As a TV movie, it really isn't all that terrible, and it is actually better than the way too many disappointing episodes of its inspiration, The Walking Dead. (As a DVD release, however, Zombie Apocalypse arguably also lacks the added requirements of gratuitous nudity, but then, most films do nowadays.)
Zombie Apocalypse is, perhaps, simply what it is: generic, low budget zombie movie, nothing spectacularly good or bad, but OK for a zombie fix if one is needed. A flick for zombie completists, in other words, and not horror movie fans.

R.I.P.: Harry H. Novak, Part XV – Other People's Films & Addendum

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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 Dec 1923 — 14 Feb 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.
Over a bit more than the past year, in a total of 14 blog entries (roughly one a month), we have taken a relatively detailed and rambling if undoubtedly incomplete career review of the projects Harry H. Novak foisted upon the American public. It is definitely not a complete list, and definitely not infallible, it was 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.
What follows here are films by other people that are connected to Harry Novak, if ever so slightly, and films that we have since discovered to have possibly been fingered by the great sleazemonger.If you know any we missed, feel free to send the title — if we get enough, we might do an Addendum II.


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 for Part VI: 1969
Go here for Part VII: 1970
Go here for Part VIII: 1971
Go here for Part IX: 1972
Go here for Part X: 1973
Go here for Part XI: 1974-75
Go here for Part XII: 1976-77
Go here for Part XIII: 1978-79 
Go here for Part XIV: 1980-86 



Other People's Films: 

Serial Mom
(1994, writ. & dir. by the great John Waters)
Trailer to
Serial Mom:
Why John Waters should choose this movie of all his movies to give "Special Thanks" to Harry Novak in the credits is beyond us, but we are sure he has seen many a Novak movie in his younger, formative days — indeed, Waters' early masterpieces share a stylistic similarity to some of Novak's sleazy low budget sexploiters.
Serial Mom is lesser Waters, but as always even lesser Waters is truly enjoyable Waters. Kids in Mind, which views the movie as conveying the message that "picture-perfect suburbs hide dark secrets", also points out that the movie includes "several brief but obvious flashes of a pornographic movie* showing nude, abnormally large breasts [Doris Wishman's Deadly Weapons (1974 / trailer below), featuring Harry Reems], and a number of skin magazines with varying degrees of female nudity. There is one very noisy and rambunctious sex scene between a married couple (they are shown under covers). There is also a very long masturbation scene (also under covers)."
* Why do so many people not realize that just because a movie has nekkid people or simulated sex scenes, it is not a porn movie?
Trailer to
Deadly Weapons:
The plot, according to the Science Fiction, Horror and Fantasy Film Review: "Beverly Sutphin (Kathleen Turner) leads a life as the perfect housewife, married to her dentist husband Eugene (Sam Waterston) and with two teenage children Chip (Matthew Lillard) and Misty (Ricky Lake). However, she also kills the neighbours who complain to the police about her obscene phone calls and steal her parking spot at the mall, the math teacher who condemns Chip for liking horror movies, and Misty's date for standing her up. She is arrested whereupon she is nicknamed 'Serial Mom' by the media. At the trial, Beverly determines to conduct her own defence by exposing the dirty secrets and hypocrisies of the witnesses brought to condemn her."
Much like Cecil B. (2000 / trailer) was the last good film from Melanie Griffith before she got totally, completely, over-the-top addicted to plastic surgery, and Pecker (1998 / trailer) was the last good film Edward Furlong made before he went off the deep end,*  Serial Mom is the last good film that Kathleen Turner made before her thyroid went wacko.
*Pecker was also the last good movie Christina Ricci made before she went Hollywood anorexic, but since we find her hot both with curves and pencil thin, we forgive her.



 Schlock!
The Secret History of American Movies
(2001, writ. & dir. Ray Greene)
Harry Novak appears as a talking head in this documentary. The description of the film found everywhere online (and now here, too) is written by Mark Denning, who wrote: "Pauline Kael once wrote that since movies were so rarely great art, if one weren't interested in great trash, there wasn't much reason to pay attention to them, and one could reasonably argue that few periods brought us more top-quality cinematic trash than the 1950s and '60s. With drive-ins and grindhouses across the United States making room for low-budget exploitation films of all stripes (such as horror, science fiction, teen exploitation, biker films, beach pictures, nudies, and much more) as the major studios were focusing their attention on big-budget blockbusters and television, this was a boom time for inspired trash, and Schlock! The Secret History of American Movies takes a look at the low-budget wonders of the 1950s and '60s, as well as the men and women who made them and the social and psychological subtexts lurking behind many of these movies. Schlock! includes interviews with Roger Corman, Peter Bogdanovich, David F. Friedman, Doris Wishman, Samuel Z. Arkoff, Dick Miller, Vampira, and more."
The busty babe on the poster is of course Pat Barrington, and the image itself taken from the poster to one of her "best" movies, The Agony of Love (1965 / trailer), which we looked at in Part III of this career review.
We couldn't find a trailer to Schlock! The Secret History of American Movies online so, instead, we present the trailer to the directorial debut of John Landis, also entitled Schlock (1973), but which has no connection to Novak.
Trailer to
John Landis's Schlock:
 



Until the Night
(2004, writ & dir. Gregory Hatanaka)

Trailer to
Until the Night:
Who knows why or how it came to be, but supposedly Harry Novak appears as a reporter somewhere in the background of this movie about relationships falling apart. Until the Night is the unknown directorial début of the equally unknown producer Gregory Hatanaka, which he followed two years later with the much more interesting flick Mad Cowgirl (2006 / trailer below). Of note about Until the Night: it stars everyone's favorite zombie-killing redneck Daryl (Norman Reedus) as Robert.
Trailer to
Mad Cowgirl:
Over at imdb, williampark77 of Los Angeles, who "couldn't wait until this night ended", complains that Until the Night is "a boring wreck of a film, and a terrible waste of the talents of some usually excellent actors. [...] Poorly shot on digital video, with a nearly nonexistent plot, lousy script, poor directorial choices that include jumpy editing and an annoying, extremely repetitious performance by Norman Reedus, who seems to be more interested in chewing his nails or smoking a cigarette than croaking another line of bad dialogue. More embarrassing is a very strange and unnecessary cameo by Sean Young, who really is going to the bottom of the barrel for a paycheck. [...] I saw this film at a special screening in Hollywood, and most of the cast and crew were in the audience and it received quite a tepid response [...]. I would advise you to avoid this movie, but it's so bad, I don't think anyone will put it out."
An opinion not shared by Film Threat, where someone gushes: "You have to excuse me if I sound a bit breathless, but I’ve just been gut-punched by a new film. The production in question is Gregory Hatanaka's Until the Night and this is one of the most mature, devastating and challenging films to come along. [...] Until the Night is such a work of professional triumph emotional maturity that it makes nearly every current drama in release pale in comparison. This is what independent filmmaking should be all about — taking chances and succeeding with gusto. What a damn fine movie!"
Trailer to
another Unknown Film featuring Norman Reedus
(and Debbie Harry, Adrian Brody, Elina Löwensohn & Issac Hayes)
truly worth rediscovery —
Six Ways to Sunday (1997):
 
 

Slink
(2013, dir. Jared Masters)

Trailer to
Slink:
Aka Virgin Leathers. Jared Masters, the founder of Frolic Pictures, is a "self-taught Beethoven" who "was expelled his freshman year of high school for streaking" and now makes independent sleaze horror flicks. That he might give "Special Thanks" to Harry Novak in the credits of one of his numerous flicks is hardly surprising, as Novak's movies are surely a stylistic and contentual influence of this Young Turk.
Slink won the award for the 'Best Scream Indie Horror' at the 2013 EOTM Awards. The plot, as taken from the Frolic Films website: "After the unexplained death of their Uncle Arlo, Kayla Nunez (Danika Galindo) and her sister (Jacqueline Larsen) venture to his home in the rural town of Wickenhaven. They plan to claim their share of his estate, but their trip takes a drastic turn after discovering that their uncle's house is occupied by a mysterious relative, Aunt May (Julia Faye West), who may be harboring deadly secrets. Complicating matters is the deranged, lust-filled tanning salon owner, Dale (Art Roberts), and his exotic wife, Joan (Dawna Lee Heising), whose business in designer handbags is the backbone to the entire town's economy, and possibly the darkest fashion controversy the world will ever know."
Slink stars younger gals who look like wanna-be porn starlets, older gals who look like former porn starlets and/or plastic surgery addicts (in this regard, "Joan", photo below, stands out in particular) and a variety of ugly men. The acting of Slink is postmodern bad, the sets cheap and the tale over the top — just our cup of tea, in other words.
But not that of Culture Crypt, which hates the flick, saying: "Unquestionably, the single greatest drawback to reviewing low budget independent horror movies is that the job requires sitting through the entirety of something like Slink. [...] Gather up some friends and family with nothing better to do and use them to populate a cast and crew, no experience required. That is the starting point for Slink. From there, the filmmaking philosophy is simply to set each scene in a corner of a room haphazardly dressed to resemble something else and let the camera roll on whatever happens. [...] Any way it is sliced, Slink is a mess on all fronts. Performances are painfully embarrassing for everyone involved. Sets look like they were constructed for a high-school stage play. The music is out of place and thoroughly obnoxious. And the ending is one of the worst ever seen. [...]"
The only complaint at Ain't It Cool News, however, is that the movie ends "as if the camera ran out of film". They go on to rave that "[...] though this one feels like it might have been done on the cheap, the idea behind it is strong and for the most part, Slink, though somewhat predictable, plays out pretty masterfully. [...] Basically this is one of those Motel Hell (1980 / trailer below) type films where a down-home business makes its business off of the flesh of young women, but instead of Farmer Vincent's fritters, the youthful flesh is made into fashionable handbags, the likes of which Paris, Brittany, and Christina tote to the fashionable affairs [...]. Slink is a pretty tight little thriller with some nice twists along the way in terms of script. The film goes to some dark places [...]. I have to give the film credit for having a very corroded moral core and going to those dank places most horror films are afraid to go. The effects are pretty great and the directing itself does a really good job of maintaining its black tone throughout. [...] Though the evil tanning salon wenches are overly botoxed and siliconed, it fits the tone of the lifestyle the film is lampooning. This is a film about looks over everything else; a comment on the shallow lifestyle we live in, so the gratuitous nudity and NIP/TUCK (2003-10) wet dream actresses serve more of a purpose than just window dressing."
Trailer to the classic black comedy
Motel Hell:
 




Addendum — Are they or Aren't They?
Though, famously, all Novak releases at Something Weird got cut and discontinued for some unknown reason, on a thread about Novak & Something Weird over at AV Maniacs, it says: "A couple of the Harry Novak releases that weren't on the deletion list are still available on the website" and then lists eight films, five of which (Acapulco Uncensored [1968], Cry for Cindy [1976], For Love and Money [1967], The Golden Box [1970] and The Muthers [1968]) we could collaborate elsewhere as Novak productions and thus looked at in earlier segments of this career review. Three titles, however, we couldn't get any collaborating evidence for, so we chose to ignore them, perhaps incorrectly. For the benefit of the doubt, we'll look at the three films here. 



Mr. Peter's Pets
(1963, dir. Dick Crane)

"This story must be told.
Otherwise you would never know about it,
because it could never happen."
(Opening narration)

Supposedly aka Petey's Sweeties. As mentioned, we have our doubts to what extent Novak was involved in this movie, which seems to be the only known directorial credit of "Dick Crane", who, according to imdb, five years earlier produced (and appeared in) Ronald V. Ashcroft's Girl with an Itch (1958 / trailer below). (Ashcroft, as some of you might know, produced and directed the masterpiece The Astounding She-Monster [1957 / trailer].)
Trailer to
Girl with an Itch:
More than one source, however, including Something Weird, a site we find more reliable than imdb, says that Dick Crane is actually the productive Peter Perry Jr., who was truly known to use the name "Dick Crane" and "Dick C. Crane" as a pseudonym — he acts under that name, for example, in what could be his best movie, Honeymoon of Terror [1961 / trailer].)
The Japanese poster above comes from Pulp International, which also gives the skinny on the film: "[...] A pet shop owner (Al Hopson) orders a potion from a catalog, sending a dollar to India for Maharaja Poon Ja's Animal Ambrosia, a Hindu elixir that ensures long life and happiness for one's pets. But before he administers the elixir to his animals he decides, 'Only if it is good enough for me is it good enough for my little friends', and tastes it himself. It goes down accompanied by a bolt of lightning and a peal of thunder — sort of like when you do a Jäger shot. But instead of merely making him act like an animal he’s literally turned into one. Specifically, a turtle. Each time he takes the elixir he turns into a different animal, almost any type he wishes, from kittens to pythons. [...] He immediately uses his power to gain proximity to unsuspecting women so he can watch them take bubble baths, play guitar nude, and so forth. It's just as silly as it sounds. [...]"
Perhaps Novak truly had something to do with this movie at one point or another, but it was produced by sleazemonger Dan Sonney (23 Jan 1915 — 3 Mar 2002), David Friedman's partner at Entertainment Ventures Incorporated, who once co-owned the mummified body of Elmer McCurdy— it was bought by Dan Sonney's father, "policeman-turned-showman" Louis Sonney, in 1922 and belonged to the family business. Louis Sonney is often claimed an uncredited co-producer of the great Dwain Esper's classic road show exploiter, Maniac (1934). In Eric Schaefer's great book Bold! Daring! Shocking! True! : A History of Exploitation Films, 1919-1959, Dan Sonney says that Esper's Maniac "cost about $7,500" to make, while Esper's earlier lesser classic, Narcotic (1933 / full movie) was supposedly completed for $8,900. Likewise, in Christine Quigley's book Modern Mummies: The Preservation of the Human Body in the Twentieth Century, Dan Sonney states that "My dad was pretty good friends with Dwain Esper and loaned Elmer to him for about six months for Narcotic. [The mummy was displayed as a dead junkie.] Even after my dad died and news came out that Elmer had been found, Esper still claimed that he owned it."
Clips from Mr. Peter's Pets appear in the Sonney/Friedman documentary Mau Mau Sex Sex (2001)... 
Trailer to
Mau Mau Sex Sex (2001):
 


Her Odd Tastes
(1969, dir. Donald A. Davis [as Don Davis])


"A Bizarre and Intimate Journey for Adventurous Adults"

Writen by Jerry Wilder, who, like so many of the credited writers that worked with Don Davis, never seems to have taken part in another film, thus giving credence to the concept that that name, too, is merely one of Davis's many pseudonyms. As for Davis, we already took a look at the Ed Wood protégé and great anti-filmmaker Don Davis (7 June 1932 — 23 Sept 1982) in Parts IV, V and XII of Novak's career review when we looked at his movies, respectively, For Love and Money (1967), For Single Swingers Only (1968 / film at a NSFW website), Acapulco Uncensored (1968 / full movie), The Muthers (1968) and The Golden Box (1970). Of them, the last three, like this movie here and the next one that follows, all featured the acting and pendulous talents of Marsha Jordon, who is often praised as the "Queen of Softcore"— a title we ourselves would be more likely to give the legendary Uschi Dirgard, shown below on the cover of Men's magazine.
That aside, we would agree that Marsha had pendulous talents, as the clip below — not from any film we know of — amply demonstrates.
Not from Her Odd Tastes & NSFW—
A Naked, Buxom Marsha Jordon Lolling Around:

Over at TCM, they swipe their plot description uncredited and word for word from The American Film Institute Catalog of Motion: "Christine Hunter's search for pleasure leads her to retrace the path of Charles Odman in the film Odd Tastes, q. v. In her travels, she encounters a group of devil worshippers and participates in their rituals. Her first stopover, Hong Kong, introduces her to some 'experimentation' with erotic drugs. Moving on, she accepts the invitation of a desert sheik and experiences some of the delights of harem life. In Africa, Christine meets a youth whose unfortunate sexual experiences lead Christine into an extraordinary situation. ..." 
Few people who have seen the movie seem to have to have found it worth reviewing, a rare exception being that aficionado of filth from NYC, lor, who regular leaves his insights at imdb. Calling the movie a "wonderful vehicle for Marsha Jordan, tailored to her strong suits", he goes on to give a blow-by-blow description that reveals an affinity to the film: "Her Odd Tastes is a quite successful movie made by her frequent director Don Davis. [...] Film opens with a bang, with Jordan as Christine Hunter and a gal pal Lisa (luscious Capri) having a sensual lesbian scene — the battle of the blondes & busts. After implied cunnilingus (with Capri delivering a screaming orgasm worthy of a Joe Sarno actress), Jordan writes in her journal the revelation that this was incest — the duo are sisters! She's left town and started a new life as a cordless vibrator saleslady, door to door. (This sounds comical, but the film is played straight.) She visits the house of Charles Odman [...], and when he tries to rape her at knife-point she accidentally stabs him to death in self-defense. Jordan delivers full-frontal-nudity as she runs away, clad only in a loose bathrobe, getting a lift from good Samaritan John Franklin (Michael Perrotta, an effective character actor). He turns out to be a publisher, and volunteers to remove any incriminating evidence from the scene of the crime. He returns with Odman's journal, requesting that she continue the dead man's lifelong research concerning the ultimate in pain & pleasure. Jordan chooses to emphasize the pleasure aspect, but this is an obvious foreshadowing that pain will ensue in due course. She embarks on a globe-hopping journey to retrace Odman's steps, courtesy of some obvious stock footage, all of Jordan's scenes being shot on cheap, generic studio sets. [...]"
The final sex scene, which involves an electric chair — "a sinister recliner that belches smoke, sparks, and electric shocks"— is said to be a real scorcher...
Her Odd Tastes appears to be the sequel to an apparently lost Don Davis movie entitled Odd Tastes made the year earlier in 1968, which has a similar plot but has the wanna-be killer that Christine (Marsha Jordon) accidently kills in Her Odd Tastes, Charles Odman ("Joe Bonaparte"), as the main character exploring the nooks and crannies of sexual deviance. Going by the plot description of Odd Tastes found in The American Film Institute Catalog of Motion Pictures, the two film even overlap plotwise: "Becoming increasingly perverted, he (Odman) ultimately falls victim to his own devices: he is destroyed in a sadistic 'experiment' with a personal vibrator saleswoman."
Capri is also found in the sleazy and underappreciated Lee Frost roughie The Animal (1968), a movie "based on facts taken from authenticated newspaper files"; the great opening sequence can be seen below.
Opening Sequence to
R.L. Frost's The Animal (1968):





Marsha, The Erotic Housewife
(1970, Donald A. Davis [as Don Davis])

Trailer to
Marsha, The Erotic Housewife:

Marsha the Erotic Housewife (1970)von bmoviebabe
The second to last movie that Marsha Jordan was to make with Davis; the last, The Golden Box, was released a month after this one. By now, Marsha was a big enough name among soft-core fans that the movie — "one of the biggest adult love stories ever produced" and filmed in "THROBBING COLOR"— was literally named after her. (The last name of her character, however, was different: "Bannister".)
One Sheet Index has the original pressbook description: "Starring the incomparable Marsha Jordan and a cast of seasoned professionals, the dialogue sparkles with the humor and mannerisms of today's young marrieds. Marsha, The Erotic Housewife, the story of a beautiful young bride who learns of her husband's (Edward Blessington) lengthy affair with another woman. Her first desire is for revenge thru meaningless affairs with any man she can find. With the help of her lifelong friend, she ultimately realizes that this path can only lead to disaster; what she really wants is to save her marriage and family. The plot to return the erring husband to the fold is witty, practical, successful and surprising. [...]"
Elliot James of Score magazine, that great fan of mammoth mummeries, says "Marsha The Erotic Housewife is an easy-going domestic comedy with a slight soap opera touch, photographed in a straightforward style. Don Davis made this for the couples crowd then beginning to check out pre-hardcore adult films. Of course, he didn't neglect the raincoaters who get to examine Marsha's mammazonian birthday suit at various points."
Over at imdb, one such raincoater, JohnSolomonAuthor of Canada, shares the following commentary with the world: "Marsha as a person is perky, pretty, and very likeable. Personally I don't find women with super-size breasts all that attractive though. However, there is one absolutely GREAT erotic scene in this film. Marsha walks in on a married couple who are making out in the kitchen. The man's wife takes off all her clothes and sits naked on the kitchen counter. She is very beautiful and the scene is highly erotic."
Marsha Jordan's Last Movie —
Swinger's Massacre aka Inside Amy (1975):



Other "Maybes":

Hedonistic Pleasures
(1969, writ & dir. Ed DePriest)

Did Harry Novak have anything to do with this movie by the ever-elusive Ed DePriest? Who knows for sure — but: on the Something Weird release of the "Harry Novak Double Feature — Special Edition", featuring two known films fingered by Harry (William Rotsler's The Agony of Love [1966] and The Girl with Hungry Eyes [1967]), as an extra they present an excerpt from this movie here, Hedonistic Pleasures. Logic would say that if Harry presented it, he probably had the right to, so he must have been involved somehow, somewhere.
TCMhas a plot: "Made possible by highly sophisticated miniature cameras, this exposé of Hollywood's sexual underground deals with prostitution, sex techniques, oral sex, and group sexual encounters. Living in Hollywood there is a whole subculture of perverts, who with jaded sexual appetites, seek increasingly outrageous and bizarre means of satisfaction." Above, from the movie — though possibly swiped from another — is a blonde Pat Barrington shaking her plastic orbs for some hippies in a park.
The breast-fixated Divine Exploitation has some additional comments to the movie, "Hedonistic Pleasures is an extremely bizarre mock documentary on the wild sex life in Hollywood. You get hookers and hippies and acid trips and...well, you get the idea. Directed by Ed DePriest, this is only 55 minutes and he tries to pack in as much female flesh as possible. The weird part is the boobies.The first girl has missile-shaped ones with the entire end of the titty being nipple. The next girl is a lopsided A cup, more like an A- cup. They finally gave us a nice looking pair and her ass was scary. It was a no-win kind of thing. The scene with the hippies smoking grass and swimming seems familiar like it was in another mondo flick, but I can't place it. The scene with the couple tripping on acid had this cool projector that made it look like these bizarre shapes were erupting from her mouth. That was cool."
No trailer to be found anywhere. 



Sisters in Leather
(1969, dir. Zoltan G. Spencer)

Did Harry Novak have anything to do with this movie by Zoltan G. Spencer (aka Spence Criley)? Who knows for sure — but: on the Something Weird release of the "Harry Novak Double Feature — Special Edition", featuring two known films fingered by Harry (William Rotsler's The Agony of Love [1966] and The Girl with Hungry Eyes [1967]), as an extra they present an excerpt from this movie here, Hedonistic Pleasures. Logic would say that if Harry presented it, he probably had the right to, so he must have been involved somehow, somewhere.
Heavily edited Trailer to
Zoltan G. Spencer's most famous film,
Terror at Orgy Castle (1972):
Women in Prison Films uses frankfob2@yahoo.com'suncredited paragraph (taken from imdb) to explain the plot: "A spouse (Dick Osmun) is blackmailed by 3 lesbo riders once they identify him having sex with different female (Karen Thomas) in a convertible car. They then take the man's spouse (Kathy Williams) out for a picnic and some naked bike driving. The man discovers some male motorcyclists and collectively they try to save his girlfriend from getting a lesbo biker."
The movie features way more nudity than any twenty exploiters from the 21st century combined, as you can see by all the shots found at Score the Film's Movie Blog, which rhetorically asks (and answers) the question: "Will I watch it again? Nope."
The great blog Movies About Girls— which points out that "Zoltan G. Spencer disappeared at the dawn of the 70s. No one's seen him for 40 years. I suspect lesbian bikers were involved."—  gets to the nitty-gritty: "A shamelessly skuzzy anti-epic from the height of the grindhouse era, Sisters in Leather is, on one hand, a bit of cheat: despite the title and the tagline ('No man or woman is safe from these love-hungry hellcats!'), this is not really a biker chick movie at all, and only one of the girls actually wears leather. On the other hand, it is relentlessly grimy, and the nudity is pretty wall-to-wall, so let's call it even. As long as you don't mind threadbare production values, fuzzy black and white photography, wooden acting, wobbly overdubbing, and low-rent fake jazz — or even better, if you love all that stuff — there's plenty to like about this kooky sexploitation romp."
Dangerous Dykes!
A Scene from Sister in Leather:




Two That Got Away (1979) 
The above is a copy of a Valiant International advert that Novak took out in the Feb 19, 1979 issue of Boxoffice. Of the films mentioned, we've looked into all but two in the course of this career review. Try as we might, however, we cannot find any movies titled Three's Not Company (starring John Holmes) or Miss Banana Split, not even as an "AKA". We assume the productions never happened, or they were given new titles prior to release and never carried the moniker given in the advert. Anyone know any different?
That said, the presumed Novak-fingered movie Sissy's Hot Summer (1979), looked at in Part VII, is a take-off of the sitcom Three's Company (1977-1984) and also features John Holmes, so our guess is that movie was originally entitled Three's Not Company. Anyone know for sure?



Special Mention — Proven Not to Be Novak:

Leather Persuasion
(1980, dir. "C.B. Remington")


OK, in all truth, this movie here is also one that got away — in that we pretty much have totally confirmed that Harry Novak never had anything to do with the only known films entitled Leather Persuasion.
An online bio of Harry Novak found everywhere online states: "Boxoffice International Pictures was forced to shut down in 1978. Harry subsequently launched Valiant International Pictures in the late 70's; this particular outfit distributed such X-rated porno fare as Sissy's Hot Summer, Sweet Surrender, and Leather Persuasion." Both Sissy's Hot Summer (1979) and Sweet Surrender (1980) we were able to find and, to a limited point, offer evidence of Novak's fingers. With Leather Persuasion, however, the only evidence we've found indicates Novak didn't finger this baby.
Despite the obvious marketability of the title, it seems to grace only two existing movies, and the only one that is certifiably X-rated is the gay porn film above from 2001 directed by "Dean Dickson"— Get it? Hah! Hah! Hah! (Not!) — featuring the inferiority-complex-inducing meats of angel-eyed Michael Brandon (below) and Erik Evans (standing above; who knows who the other leatherman is). It is a film we can surely rule out as involving Novak in any way, as he was seemingly adverse to "serious" gay fare.
The second Leather Persuasion we found, an earlier film made in 1980, is a straight movie, "X-rated", but not porn; the image way above (from Vidbase) is the VHS cover used for the Centurian Leather release. This obscure 1980 movie was directed by "C.B. Remington", and the plot, according to Ravishment University, is: "Kim, Joannie & Connie are three lovely girls on a summer outing. They are tricked and trapped into spending the night at a house of seemingly comfortable lodgings. They are drugged and forced into slavery with lots of bondage and discipline by Tamara, a Dominatrix extreme."
Alone the fact that the movie features the great David F. Friedman in the cast indicates that the movie is not a Novak flick.... something confirmed when we contacted L.J. Dopp, who the website CD Baby says "was art director for exploitation producer David F. Friedman's pioneer home video company, TVX, and directed his first commercial movie, Leather Persuasion, in 1980 — a film of inordinate restraint featuring Friedman as a detective."
L.J. Dopp was kind enough to tell us about his "50 minutes long, well-shot (and lit) in 16mm" movie: "[...] I read in a European book on the sexploitation masters that Harry Novak also made a film titled Leather Persuasion in 1980, and figured that guy had my film mixed-up with Harry's, as [...] he had nothing to do with my film — nor does my film contain any actual violence or sex. Yes, I used the name 'C.B. Remington' as director, and 'Siegfried Lohengrin' as composer. [...] That is the correct plot listed by Ravishment Univ. Two of the three victims had just been in Roger Corman's Humanoids from the Deep (1980 / trailer), and the third (Marci Drake) was the first victim in The Toolbox Murders (1978 / trailer). She gave me such a hard time on Leather Persuasion that when I discovered her murder in that splatter film — by Cameron Mitchell with a claw hammer — I rewound the tape and watched it a couple of more times. David F. Friedman, my boss at TVX (adult video), kindly appeared as a detective in Leather Persuasion's final scene, but it was an odd duck having no hardcore or simulated sex scenes, no actual S&M, but lots of female nudity and bondage. The producers made their money back and then some by selling videos for $89 retail through their many bondage mags. Film cost $12,000 and they put up ten; I never got paid."
 Marci Drake in The Toolbox Murders:
OK, now it's official: despite what is written all over the web, Harry Novak had nothing to do with Leather Persuasion. As for "C.B. Remington", L.J. Dopp went on to become "an award-winning commercial artist who specializes in fantasy, horror and sci-fi projects as well as movie work." His last directorial project is the cult-worthy Crustacean (2010), the trailer of which you find below.
Trailer to
L.J. Dopp's Crustacean:




Addendum — Other Novak Firms & Films:
Through the wonder that is called the Internet, we were able to uncover that Harry Novak and his wife Carmen Novak had more film-related businesses than just the commonly known and reported firms Boxoffice International and Valiant International Pictures. At various times, the building at 4774 Melrose Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90029, — owned by the Harry Novak TR Trust — housed a variety of other firms headed by one or the other Novak, or both, or that can be linked (if only faintly) to Harry Novak.
Kathay International Productions, for example, which has since been dissolved but, in 1970, applied for the copyright to the Novak-presented Wilbur and the Baby Factory (1970, see Part VII). Or All-World Pictures, Ltd., which, in 1975, had Cynthia's Sister (1972, see Part IX), The Sinful Dwarf (1973, see Part X) and The Manicurist* all seized when they attempted to bring the movies into London "on the grounds that the said goods are indecent or obscene [...]". (The French website Encyclo Ciné also lists All-World Pictures as a co-producer of Teenage Bride [1975, see Part XI]). Or CNH Video, which the imdb claims distributed the VHS's of the Novak projects Booby Trap (1970, see Part VII), Machismo: 40 Graves for 40 Guns (1971, see Part VIII) and A Scream in the Streets (1973, see Part X).
* Regrettably, we weren't able to find any movie known as The Manicurist, though it seems to have been screened in a double feature with The Black Godfather (1974 / trailer) or Dr. Masher (1969) at some locations in 1975.
The CNH Video cover to
A Scream in the Street, re-titled Scream Street:

Also at 4774 Melrose Avenue: Channel X Video, Inc, with its president Carmen Novak, and Global Pictures, Inc., with its now-deceased President Harry Novak. Yep, the Harry Novak juggled a lot of firms aside from those commonly known. Novak's Global Pictures, which, as far as we can tell, didn't do anything after about 1972, should not be confused with Yoram Globus's Global Pictures, which as of the 1990s has kept the world flooded in action trash from Cannon Films.

A search of the Copyright Office reveals that Channel X Video, Inc., applied for copyrights to a number of known Novak films that we already looked at — Fandango aka Mona's Place (1970 / see Part VII), Street of a 1000 Pleasures (1972 / see Part IX), Bust Out (Convicts Woman) (1973 / see Part X), Black Bunch (1973 / see Part X), and Black Alley Cats (1973 / see Part X) — as well as some we haven't. So let's take a look at the known films that Novak, or Channel X Video, fingered... or at least tried to gain some copyright control of — the next five films. 



Female Factory
(1971, writ & dir. Lee Frost)
Aka Surftide Female Factory, but under all titles this Lee Frost sexploitation movie is considered lost. But then again, maybe not. We can't help but notice that the American poster above lists some of the same stars as on the poster for the 1973 German release of ...und ewig knarren die Betten shown below.
But: ...und ewig knarren die Betten is actually the belated release of a 1962 Lee Frost movie entitled nothing less than Surftide 77 (1962) — a movie that features none of the names on the two posters above.
Odder still, however, on-line sources list H. Duane Weaver as the co-scriptwriter of both the 1962 and 1971 movie, although the only other films we could find listing his name on the credits all come from 1961/62 (they would be: the classic low-budgeter Night Tide [1961 / trailer], as associate producer; the Arch Hall Jr. vehicle Eegah (1962 / trailer), as production manager; and Rider on a Dead Horse [1962 / scene], as production supervisor). Strangely enough, both Female Factory and Surftide 77 also share the same cameraman, Andrew Janczak, whose limited output includes the psychotronic classics The Creeping Terror (1964 / full film), as director of photography, and his underappreciated sole directorial effort, Terror in the Jungle (1968 / scene).
A Trailer to
The Creeping Trailer (1964):
So dare we suggest that Female Factory and Surftide 77 are actually one and the same movie, at most possibly re-cut? The evidence is there...
We discovered an on-line review of ...und ewig knarren die Betten at the German blog splattertrash, and they flatly state that the German version is not only an edit of 1962's Surftide 77 with new material but also give Surftide Female Factory as an aka title for the older film. The plot they offer is as follows: "The P.I. Bernhard Bingbang (Thomas Newman) is hired by the aged Agatha [and Townsend] Bungworthy (Bob Cresse [in a duel role]) to find the sole heir to the family fortune. The only clue: the young lady has a mole in the shape of a butterfly on her breast — so Bingbang really needs to take a close look at all the ladies that come in question."
Among the women he gets a close look at are the scrumptious Althea Currier and the early Playboy Playmates Arline Hunter* (August 1954) and — sigh — Virginia Gordon (January 1959, seen above).
Virginia Gordon Show Her Boobs in
Surftide 77:

Virginia Gordon Surftide 77von explorerwinfield
* "Much of Hunter's fame was built upon her resemblance to Marilyn Monroe; indeed, her Playboy pose was obviously inspired by Monroe's notorious 1949 nude photo session. The similarity in look between Hunter and Monroe also came into play when a nude Hunter starred in a film short called Apple Knockers and Coke. For many years there have been those who have seen the film and have mistaken Hunter for Monroe."



Dr. Carstair's 1869 Love-Root Elixir
(1972, dir. Henning Schellerup [as Hans Christian])

NSFW Trailer to

Dr. Carstair's 1869 Love-Root Elixir: 

Trailer till
Aka Sticky Fingers and a variety of foreign-language names. Scripted by Joseph Dury, who also co-wrote Henning Schellerup's Novak-distributed The Black Alley Cats (1973, see Part X) and Schellerup's later forgotten porn noir Night Pleasures (1976). Among Schellerup's less interesting projects is the TV version of The Time Machine (1978), which we looked at in our R.I.P. Career Review of the character actor R.G. Armstrong.
Dr. Carstair's 1869 Love-Root Elixir is a hardcore flick complete with stiff dicks, penetration and money shots, or at least the movie also exists in a hardcore version. We weren't too lucky in finding a plot anywhere online, though Erotica Films does offer "A couple of thugs rob gold from the peaceful miners, then they steal their women. This leads to fighting, making up, a threesome in a brothel."
Vintage XXX adds an additional detail, taken from the Alpha Blue DVD release backside description: "Bandits steal gold and women from innocent townsfolk. Contains what is probably the sexiest scene of a girl peeing into a cowboy hat ever filmed!"
DVD Drive-In adds that the movie features the "favorites Marsha Jordan and Kathy Hilton. It is, by all accounts, lost, and the trailer has stock music from Novak's corn-porn pictures!" (Lost, the film is not.)
Over at imdb, the inexhaustible Lor of New York City calls the flick a "well-made porn Western [that] deserves a wider audience". He continues to explain [*spoilers*]: "Dr. Carstair's is a surprisingly good example of that rare bird, XXX Western saga. [...] The movie looks good, has decent location photography, and even the period dress rings true. It's simple-minded in script, but no dumber than any of dozens of Charles Starrett B-Westerns of the '40s and '50s cranked out by Columbia. Looking a bit like both Val Avery and William Conrad, William Guhl (of Kiss of the Tarantula [1976 / trailer] and Grave of the Vampire [1972 / trailer]) is effective in the title role, as a 19th-century huckster traveling the West with his plain-Jane but sexy daughter Jenny (an unidentified actress) selling a tonic for $1 a bottle which seemingly has aphrodisiac qualities. He formerly had a gold mine in a small town he returns to, but evil Garett (Tony Vorno, who looks a lot like soft porn star Gary Kent) has stolen his supposedly tapped-out mine. [Vorno, by the way, directed and wrote one film, the infamous rape flick, Victims (1982), and can be found in Garden of the Dead (1972 / full movie).] [...] At least in the Alpha Blue Archives version, this film is an unusual example of a successful spice-up splice job, wherein fully XXX insert shots logically extend the sex scenes into what 1972 audiences really wanted to see. [...] One drawback however is that for fellatio footage the performer doubling for each actress does not look like the original performer. The sex scenes are remarkably effective in their hybrid form and probably improve rather than tarnish the original film. [...] Homework assignment is to identify the actress who played Jenny, a talented enough trouper who is key to this film's success."



Keys
(1973, writ. & dir. George Bowden)
Though credited to "George Tilghman" (director) and "D. Taylor" (writer), this obscure and possibly lost comedy was written and directed by George Bowden, whose early involvement in the Los Angeles exploitation film scene and BA in journalism eventually led to the security of a lifelong job at LA City College (he' since retired, professor emeritus).
Among the projects he participated in: He played "David the Intern" in Ted V. Mikels'The Corpse Grinders (1971 / trailer); he was the still photographer for Black Starlet (1974); he wrote the original concept and story to Hollywood High (1976 / a trailer), but not the screenplay; and, as far as we know his only other directorial project was the documentary short Swimsuits Optional (1983), "an intelligent look at the conflict over nudity at beaches" and "a must for those who enjoy good documentaries".
Bowden's own plot description of Keys, given at imdb: "A key to a train station locker containing a fortune in cash is missing and a young couple must join a special 'club' to find it. This spoof of swingers in the 1970s is a race against time featuring colorful characters and scenery."
Keys stared the cult actress Barbara Mills, among other regulars of the LA exploitation scene of the late 60s & early 70s.



Little Girls Blue
(1978, dir. "Joanna Williams")
Aka Mama Don't Preach. Director "Joanna Williams", whose limited output consists of about five hardcore films, is known to have used the pseudonyms Wray Hamilton and Jennifer Ray; some on-line sources claim she is the former soft-core actress "Ann Myers", otherwise known as Anne Perry aka Anne Meyers (of House on Bare Mountain [1962 / full movie] and Swamp Girl [1971 / trailer]), who in turn became the porn director Anne Perry-Rhine, known for Sweet Savage (1979 / full NSFW film) and Star Babe (1977 / full NSFW film). Other sources swear she is actually is the former soft-core actress Maria Lease, of Lee Frosts The Scavengers (1969 / opening credits) and Love Camp 7 (1969 / trailer), and Dracula vs. Frankenstein (1971 / trailer below).
Anyone know for sure? We tend towards Maria Lease...
Trailer to
Dracula vs. Frankenstein:
Little Girls Blue did well enough to warrant a sequel, five years later in 1983, also directed by "Joanna Williams", entitled  Little Girls Blue Part 2. Both Part I and II were written by Williams and "William Dancer", the latter of whom is better known as Daniel Cady, the under-appreciated exploitation producer of many a fun trash film beginning with Help Wanted Female (1968 / 8 minutes) and ending with Dolly Dearest (1991 / trailer below); he foisted many a John Hayes movie and Henning Schellerup movie (including Dr. Carstair's) onto the breathless public.
Daniel Cady, by the way, is married to former soft-core starlet (see above) Maria Lease, the director of Dolly Dearest (1991).
Trailer to
Dolly Dearest:

In a rare review of a porn movie, The Video Vacuum explains Little Girls Blue: "The sex-starved students at the Townsend School for Girls fantasize about getting it on with their teachers. The faculty, as it turns out, has similar aspirations. Some of the students actually manage to seduce and bed their teachers while others sneak out of school in the middle of the night to meet their boyfriends in a barn for sex. [...] Little Girls Blue is a classic erotic XXX flick that harkens back to a time when adult films were more than just a series of unending sex scenes and money shots. It boasts an impressive production design and a good use of location. Williams directs the fantasy scenes in a dreamlike manner (there is lots of slow motion) and the results are quite steamy. She puts more heart into what could've been just another horny schoolgirl movie and handles the sex scenes rather well. [...] Folks, they just don't make 'em like this anymore." (Considering the sex objects of the film — schoolgirls — the topic is so P.I. it ain't surprising.) 



Butter Me Up!
(1984, dir. Charles Webb [as Charles De Santos])
 

"Shot Live On Video Tape!"

Aka Last Tango in Sausalito. Not a classic of the Golden Age. The tagline, as found at imdb: "Sexy blonde housewives experiment with hard cocks and dildos up their perfect pink asspipes!"
The DVD back cover embellishes the non-plot: "Through a series of flashbacks, a beautiful wife recalls her introduction to anal sex. Adventures include scenes with her young and wild girlfriends and a series of group encounters that are sure to please the lusty viewer!" Hard to believe that the same director made The Seven Seductions (see Part XIV) only three years earlier. Starring: Nina Hartley, Lili Marlene and Rocky Balboa.

The End?

Maximum Overdrive (USA, 1986)

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Today, over 25 years after the movie came out, the irony of the trailer still remains breathtaking: in it, when it comes to making a filmic adaptation of his work, Stephen King loudly proclaims that "If you want it done right, you have to do it yourself." And the final result? One of the worst-made Stephan King movies ever — a truly noteworthy feat, considering how many crappy King flicks there are out there.
Of course, since the day he foisted this mildly enjoyable if incredibly flawed turd upon the world, King has gone on record as having been totally coked out of his mind when he made the movie, which does indeed explain some of the flaws, especially the one that this movie shares with many of his verbose, mid-career Moby Dick wanna-be novels: despite always being best sellers, they (like this movie) tend to lose their direction amidst a plethora of unneeded, diffuse characters.
And too many characters this movie does indeed have: many, when they die, the viewer has a hard time even placing where they showed up earlier in the film, while others (including some that survive to sail off into the sunrise) are shallow stereotypes that are perhaps meant to be funny but are at best annoying or, at worst, offensive (the black guy killed by the game machines leads the list here). Much like too many cooks spoil the brew, too many characters dilute the movie.
Maximum Overdrive is based on the short story Trucks, which isn't even one of the best ones found in the compilation in which it appears, Night Shift. A simple tale focusing on a small group of people trapped in the diner of roadside gas station when a passing space cloud causes all machines to come alive and attack humanity. In the movie, once the starting situation is explained (and presented by a cheesy-looking green cloud surrounding a photo of the earth glued against a starry sky), the revolt of the machines kicks off with a laugh — with a "Fuck You" on a electronic bank sign and an ATM calling a dorky guy (Stephan King himself) an asshole — before segueing into two truly excellent scenes: the disorganized panic and destruction caused of a revolting drawbridge that opens by itself, and a kid's baseball game beset by killing machines. (The last features a great killer soda pop machine and a cement roller gone wild.)
These opening scenes, followed by the later extended scene of the lone surviving kid, Deke Keller (Holter Graham of Hairspray [1988 / trailer], Six Ways to Sunday [1997 / trailer] and The Curse [1999 / trailer]), wandering through a desolate suburbia full of death, destruction and machines out to kill, truly lead the viewer into believing that the film is going to be a good one — and that Stephan King might indeed have some talent as a director. True, too few killer machines seem to be out and about — there had to be a lot to kill as many people as they did, but we more or less only see one lawnmower and one ice-cream truck — but the scenes have a visual impact and work, which is the thing of importance.
Regrettably, Maximum Overdrive never again gets close to achieving the force or effectiveness of these first ten minutes and, throughout the rest of the movie, drags, annoys, bores, or flabbergasts in its general incompetency — at which point the viewer can't help but suddenly noticing all the flick's narrative inconsistencies, the biggest of which is that although it is inferred that all machines come alive (for example: the electric carving knife that attacks the waitress [Ellen McElduff] or, earlier and in passing, a hair-dryer that obviously strangled its user and a walkman that destroyed some poor sap's brain), too many don't: the cars of various characters, the motorboats in the harbor during the escape on water, virtually all the electronic gadgets at the diner, etc. etc. etc. Indeed, most of the time, aside for the trucks and M151 MUTT with a mounted machine gun, once the final group of humans has gathered together, the world is surprisingly empty of killer gadgets. And, hell, if pinball machines go homicidal, why don't the fucking ceiling lights? And what about the restaurant's radio? And, and — ah, hell: better not get started on that.
In the end, the true flaw of the movie is not the plot inconsistencies; it is the movie's inability to maintain enough tension to cover up the inconsistencies. Once the stereotypical Bible huckster (Christopher Murney of Barton Fink [1991 / trailer]) gets hit by the truck, Maximum Overdrive begins grinding its gears and quickly begins to instigate yawns. This flaw is aggravated by the fact that most of the characters are so one-note and uninteresting, while the few efforts to add character dimension — see: Bill Robinson's (Emilio Estevez) attempt to explain his youthful stupidity to the mandatory love interest Brett Graham (Laura Harrington of Midnight Cabaret [1990 / trailer]) — are oddly wooden and unconvincing. (In general, and in particular the tertiary characters such as the Bible huckster or hick bridesmaid Connie [Yeardley Smith], Maximum Overdrive reveals one of the biggest weaknesses of King's plethora of minor characters: on film, they tend to be shallow or exaggerated stereotypes, for unlike in his books they don't have untold pages of verbosity to tell the full who, what, when, where, why and how behind them.)
What the fuck, though, slagging this movie is a bit like whipping a dead horse since the little reputation it has is a bad one. So, to go ever slightly against the grain: although Maximum Overdrive is indeed a bad movie that need not be put on anyone's "Must See" list, it isn't 100% santorum-dripping elephant anus. The first ten minutes are really good, as are many of the special effects (those that have aged badly have at least become funny). Likewise, Deke Keller (the surviving kid) and one or two other characters — Handy (an underused Frankie Faison, of C.H.U.D. [1984 / trailer], Exterminator 2 [1984 / trailer] and For Sale by Owner [2009 / trailer]) and hillbilly Curtis (John Short) — actually overcome the one-dimensionality of their characters. And, furthermore, more than once King shows a creative eye in his camerawork, be it the visual composition of the shot, the use of foreground and background, or an effective if short dolly shot... given a film or two more, he might have developed some minor directorial skill.
Had Maximum Overdrive only been a bit more bloody, had it only been a bit more unremittedly trashy or sleazy, had it only had more bare skin (it has none), had it only been directed by a no-name, it might have been an acceptable if un-noteworthy trash film. As it is, however, it is only a lesson in how, much like when it comes to your plumbing repairs at home, "If you want it done right, don't do it yourself."
And, of course, how you should lay off the coke when making a movie — a lesson we actually thought already taught three years earlier when Vic Morrow and two kids lost their heads during the filming of the John Landis segment of The Twilight Zone (1983 / trailer).

Film Noir (Serbia, 2007)

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Last week at our weekly bad film night, for some unexplainable reason we decided not to watch the direct-to-DVD horror film starring Uri Geller entitled Sanatoriumaka Diagnosis (2001 / German trailer) and, instead, pulled this totally unknown B&W feature-length animation film out of our pile of mystery movies on DVD.
What can we say other than that it ruined the night: instead of some hilariously crappy movie as expected, we found ourselves watch a truly engrossing and first-rate if flawed and obviously low budget movie. We would have been like totally pissed off had the movie not captured our attention so thoroughly and been so entertaining (in a good way). It is without a doubt the best B&W animated film noir we've seen since, well, about a half year ago when we caught the animated French sci-fi noir, Renaissance (2006 / trailer). That film is a good one in itself, butFilm Noir definitely out-noirs Renaissance, sometimes to the point of almost becoming a satire of the genre. Unlike Renaissance, however, which is totally B&W, Film Noir borrows a page from the far more Baroque  Sin City (2005 / trailer) in that there are occasional flashes of color — women's red nails or lipstick, red-rimmed gunshot wounds, yellow cabs, etc. — amidst the B&W shadows of a world long gone wrong.
Like the much flashier, better-scripted and bigger-budgeted star vehicle Sin City, the obviously low budget Film Noiris almost as much of an action flick as it is a noir. But Sin City is far more a comic nook than Film Noir, although Film Noir does suffer from some comic book plotting and action sequences. But it is a sign of quality that Film Noir works so well despite such flaws. (One action scene in it does actually go over the edge — though the film manages to recover — and brings to mind the joke in Last Action Hero [1993 / trailer] about how no matter how many guns are shot at Arnie in the film world, he never gets hit by a single bullet: in Film Noir, there is an outrageous car vs. helicopter chase in which our hero is out-driving a machine-gun-wielding bad guy in a helicopter who shoots hundreds of bullets at him at point-blank range but only hits the car's hood seven times. An unintentional joke that leads to a small scene thereafter at a used car lot that once again reinforces an idea that laces the entire movie: everyone is corrupt, and everyone can be bought.)
Film Noir utilizes the quintessential noir plot device of amnesia, a favorite of traditional noirs —   Somewhere in the Night(1946 / trailer), The Crooked Way(1949 / scene), High Wall (1947 / trailer), Black Angel (1946 / trailer) or Street of Chance (1942)*, anyone? — as well as contemporary neo-noirs (Shutter Island[2010 / trailer], Memento [2000 / trailer] or Dark City[1998 / trailer], anyone?). Our hero awakens next to a dead body, a cop, and has no memory of who he is or how he got where he is, and then spends more than half of the movie trying to find out his identity. Confronted by duplicitous but hot-to-fuck babes, a shady doctor, a missing private eye, and scores of hitmen out to kill him, he begins to realize that whoever he is, he ain't a nice guy. And finally, once he solves the mystery of his identity, he is no better off than before and must now figure out a way of getting out of the whole mess alive.
*Street of Chance puts a twist on the ol' amnesia plot by beginning with a man awakening from his amnesia, only to be in danger from whatever it was that happened in his other life, which he in turn now no longer remembers.
Film Noir is set in a quasi-contemporary world complete with mobile phones and an internet that supplies info better and quicker than that of today, but at the same time the "back-projected" cityscape often has an oddly 40s feel. Yes, the action takes place in the ultimate noir city, Los Angeles,* a place that always rains at night unless you happen to be driving a convertible (which, as everyone knows, you can also leave parked in a bad part of town for days with its top down and keys in the glove compartment and not have stolen). It's a lonely world, one in which the women might be hot to hop in bed with you, but also won't bat an eye ratting on you once they've had their big O. It is almost emblematic of that world that the only woman who turns out to be "true", or "honest" and "trustworthy", is also the one who's most fucked up. (That said, we personally have never met a junkie — and we've known more than we care to admit — who was any of the three.)
* We doubt that anyone who has lived or lives in LA and who has enjoyed the experience of driving its empty roads, particularly in the industrial areas, late at night would disagree with this statement.
It is, in the end, a bit difficult to write about Film Noir without giving away too much of the events, and in turn it must be said that the movie is more a case of matter over substance than anything else. Many aspects of the narrative are pure baloney, of the level of low-grade pulp plotting, and the whole movie probably wouldn't work if it had been done live action. But as an animated movie, Film Noir bathes in its source and creates a mood and rhythm that underscores the various themes — duplicity being the main one, as almost every character of the movie has a hidden side — that drift in and out of the movie. The animation itself is already a bit old fashioned, but this is actually an advantage, as it acts a bit like the mesmerizing patina that old age lends the B&W classic noirs. The jazzy soundtrack, redolent of lascivious cigarette smoke and whiskey, might definitely be more neo-noir than noir, but it underscores the visuals and events excellently, adding that special spice to the pervading mood of the movie.
The big question this film leaves in its wake is: Why the fuck hasn't anyone heard of it yet? It should be a cult hit, but it's more unknown than any given Ralph Bakshi flick. Time for that to change.

Short Film: Happiest Monster (USA, 2006)

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Like so many shorts, we stumbled upon this little "lo-fi" treasure on YouTube.
It was a foundation year project of Jonathan Kim, made at Cal Arts. According to his Linked-In page, Kim, who attended Cal Arts from 2005 – 2009 and got a BA in character animation, is currently a senior animator at Lab Zero Games in Los Angeles, the "forward-thinking and retro-minded [...] independent game development studio founded by the original team that brought you Skullgirls". Whatever.
Kim seems aka "PP-Infinity". He has a Tumblr site and a presence at YouTube, whence the film below comes.
The plot, as explained at Online Short Films: "The story of a lucky girl who chances upon a visit by a monster and experiences the change of her life! Flying through the everlasting sky, euphoria awaits everyone who embarks on this journey with the happiest monster!"
The short tale presented, on a symbolic level, is that of a little girl who, as we all are told we should, confronts fears. But, unlike you're told as a child, doing that doesn't always help much in the end.
"With music by the very talented Mr. Andrew Toups." Enjoy.

Soft Target / Crooked (USA, 2006)

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To put it bluntly, Soft Target— aka Crooked — isn't exactly a masterpiece of action. True, we did enjoy watching it — what male isn't made happy by naked love pillows (plastic or not) and shooting guns and an occasional hearty belly-laugh? — but never once did the movie ever transcend the level of low grade sub-mediocrity that every scene, every aspect of the movie, exudes.

Admittedly, we did have hopes, at first, for despite the flimsy familiarity of the plot — to quote imdb: "two police detectives must protect a beautiful call girl from mob hitmen and a crooked cop"— the lineup of headlining names is impressive. But, at the latest, when the great Fred Williamson, as Dt. Jack Paxton, exits five minutes into what is at best a glorified guest appearance (done either as a favor or to pay a bar tab), we knew we had once again popped a loser into the DVD player. Luckily, however, the loser of a film was at least entertainingly funny, if always unintentionally... and there's nothing we like more than a crappy film that's funny crap.
Our first laugh came when the Afro-American dude (Maurice Lamont) staked out in front of the hotel actually said "Two years more and I'm out." We knew then and there he would die — and two minutes later, he did, along with Fred Williamson and some dozen others, in a hail of bullets. And though the face of the crooked cop is never shown, the early voiceover opening the movie already reveals the mystery — and thus renders the whole "Who could it be?" aspect of the movie a farce.
Hero Number One, Danny Tyler (Don 'The Dragon' Wilson of Night Hunter [1996 / trailer]) shows up a minute later, in a bar scene that looks tacked on from another movie, and soon thereafter he, the by-the-book man, gets partnered by Chief John Rouse (Gary Busey of Piranha 3DD[2012], A Crack in the Floor[2001] and The Gingerdead Man [2005 / trailer]) with the break-the-rules man Phil Yordan (Olivier Gruner) to find Angel (DianaKauffman, of Ted Bundy [2002 / trailer] and Glass Trap [2005 / trailer]), the hooker with plastic mammaries who saw it all. (Kauffman, by the way, followed this flick with an appearance in the video World's Sexiest Nude Women [2007], where everything she has totally pales in comparison to Erica Campbell's 100% naturals.) That the hooker also has a heart of gold is of course to be expected, as Soft Target is not only very much by-the-number but a romantic interest is needed for Danny the Dragon and his dragon. Mr. Break-the-Rules, on the other hand, has a stewardess at hand — and a very well-earning one, too, going by the look of her house.
The high points of the movie, if not the most professionally executed, are indeed the silicone mountains, which are displayed in longer nude scenes than are normal for contemporary flicks of this ilk. Likewise, we do admit having a soft spot that gets hard for Olivier Gruner (of Re-Generator[2010 / trailer], Nemesis [1992 / trailer] and Savate [1995 / French trailer), who gets naked for a tub scene but, regrettably, totally fails to deliver the full frontal we've dreamt of for years. The fight scenes, on the other hand, are far between and all extremely disappointing and disjointed affairs that fail to deliver any thrill, and while the background is filled with oddly familiar faces — Martin Kove and Bret Roberts, for example — they are not really given all that much to do.
There really isn't anything to recommend about the Soft Target in regard to drama, tension, acting, narrative, direction or even action, but we did laugh a lot — deep, heartfelt belly laughs that only true jokes and religious people can normally give rise to. We don't watch many action films, but of all those that we have, this is probably one of the most cheap-looking, badly acted ones yet — it makes The Tracker(2000), for example, look like a masterpiece of cinema in comparison.
Hampered with its dull, poorly executed fight scenes and unfocused shootouts, a love-story subplot as convincing as plastic flowers, and way toooooo much background character information (hooker with heart of gold, straight cop with a corrupt suicide dad cop, etc.), Soft Target is truly a fiasco of an action film. Were it not that it kept us laughing, we'd probably be yelling for the director's head. But it did keep us laughing, and is you have an appreciation for the absurd, the stupid, the bad— Look! Don in a Tree! Look, the hooker loves Don! Watch her run away instead of back in the house! Look! Look! Danger, Will Robinson! Danger!   Soft Target might make you laugh, too.
On the other hand, you might just see it as the piece of low-grade, sorry-ass shit it is. A wasted cast, if you get down to it, and though everyone involved has done worse, they have also all done better — and could and should do better.

Zero 2 (Lithuania, 2010)

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We caught this flick under the title Shoot 'Em Down,not knowing that it's actually a sequel to a Lithuanian flick made four years earlier by the same director, Emilis Velyvis, entitled Zero. Alyvine Lietuva (2006). The AKA title of this flick here, the sequel, is an obvious play upon Shoot 'Em Up (2007 / trailer), another kill-happy, bullet-ridden film which, in all truth, we have yet to manage to catch despite the presence of the babalicious Monica Bellucci. And since we haven't seen Zero. Alyvine Lietuva, either, and have no idea how this flick and that one interconnect (if at all), we'll just approach Shoot 'Em Down here as a stand-alone movie.
When Shoot 'Em Down hit the film festivals in 2010, it was picked up by the L.A.-based Epic Pictures, but it seems that they chose to lock the movie away for it has yet to get an official English-language release. Too bad, 'cause as misogynist as the movie is, it is also a relatively funny if contrived Tarantino cum Guy Richie wannabe that would be popular with the male market segment and, perhaps, less sensitive females or those who are husband-beaten. A few people must have seen it, however, 'cause director Emilis Velyvis' follow-up project, Redirected (2014 / trailer), now has some international names in it — if you count Vinnie Jones (of Slipstream[2005]) and a few other even less well-known English faces as "international", that is.
Told in a typically Tarantino non-linear fashion, Shoot 'Em Down is set in a violent world in a big city small enough that everyone seems to cross every else's paths just by chance (much like in Pulp Fiction [1994 / trailer], where in the middle of Los Angeles, with its millions and millions of inhabitants, crime boss Marsellus Wallace [Ving Rhames of Day of the Dead (2008), Zombie Apocalypse (2011), Piranha 3D (2010) and Piranha DD (2012)] just happens to opportunely cross a crosswalk directly in front of boxer Butch Coolidge [Bruce Willis], whom Marsellus wants dead). In Shoot 'Em Down, it is fairly certain that if two people who have never seen each other before meet briefly in a gas station or fast-food joint, elsewhere in the movie they'll meet again and a dead body will suddenly be involved, a dead body of someone that in all likelihood also crossed the path of some other character elsewhere and earlier in the movie. Not very believable, needless to say, but it makes for a streamlined narrative and some good laughs — and a lot of dead bodies.
Set in a world where no one is clean, the basic plot involves a drug heist, two killers contracted to get the drugs back, a bunch of people involved with a daily soap, and a variety of other people, mostly women, connected to the various testosterone-heavy men all leaving a trail of blood behind them. Everyone's paths cross bloodily and ferociously, and the bodies pile up in one tasteless and meanly hilarious scene after the other. There's nothing remotely PC or elegant about the humor in this flick, but if you're not squeamish about stuff like that you could well find yourself laughing throughout the movie.
The first sight gag in the opening scene of a cop selling some SWAT uniforms to some low-scale gangsters more or less sets the tone for how women are viewed in the movie — they're there as sex toys — and elsewhere it becomes apparent that in the world the film moves in, it's also really not that bad if you occasionally knock 'em up the side of the head. (Although one woman, at least, does take offense to the latter and takes some pretty extreme action — OK in our book.) And you know what? In this flick, it's also more or less OK to cut the silicone bags out of... uh, well, see the movie yourself to find out that.
That's about it, actually. There is no message to the movie, no subliminal text, no political statement (unless you count a blatant undercurrent of misogyny as a political statement). It's just a tight if contrived, violent and sickly funny flick that is shot well, edited well, and for the most part acted well.
Shoot 'Em Down never really stops to let you, the viewer, breath or think but instead barrels straight on down the highway and over the dead bodies until the final scene, tossing every possible tasteless, brutal, blood-spattered, and sexist sight gag and joke and body part at you as it goes. Once or twice the narrative stumbles — we really don't know why the one guy didn't emasculate the bathrobe-wearing hitman when he had the chance — but before you can really think about it the movie is already miles further. Shoot 'Em Down definitely ain't for the ladies, but the rest of you might enjoy it. (We did — our other half didn't.) One thing for sure, however, is that Shoot 'Em Down sure makes Lithuania look like the kind of place you don't want to visit — as did, for that matter, J. Jackie Baier's tragic documentary film Julia(2013).

Misc. Film Fun: Otres Aires — Milonga Sentimental

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Just so you know, there is no such thing as Argentinean Tango — but let's move on.
Many, many a moon ago, our better half took us to South America to see the country of her origin, Uruguay. The nation, and its oddly timeless and forgotten capital Montevideo*— not to mention the little hole-in-the-wall villages up the coast closer to Brazil — have been favorite places ever since, and were we only much more fluid, we would go there regularly, if not move there. (The problem is not always whether one can find a job somewhere, or whether one can speak the language, which we in regard to Spanish — better half excepted — cannot, but whether one wants to live on the same pay as the natives. Plus the concept of, for the second time in one lifetime, eternally losing physical, true contact with all friends and family — which is one of the drawbacks of becoming not an ex-pat for a few years, but a bona fide resident of a foreign country.)
It was during the first visit there that tango infected us, and since then tango and, even more so, milonga and various contemporary electro tangents of both have remained our favorite music.
Of course, while there in Montevideo, a visit to Argentina and Buenos Aires was du jour, and while neither that city nor the country impressed us as much as its smaller, usually ignored relative across the Rio de la Plata, what we were introduced to in Buenos Aires one night, wafting as it was from a store close to our fleabag hotel, was the music of Otres Aires, which then and there and ever since has been our favorite bands.
And today, we discovered a video to one of our many favorite songs by Otres Aires, Milonga Sentimental,** incorporating an old cartoon the name of which we do not know, though we would hazard to guess that it is from Max Fleischer. The combination, we find wonderful, as it conjoins two things we love: the music of Otres Aires and the cartoons of yesteryear. 
Now all we need is an asado on the pampa with some good red wine and skies filled with more stars than you could ever conceive.
Enjoy! And buy their CDs — we have them all!
(Hereyou find an early version of worse quality but with images of Otres Aires in concert.)
* Screw Prague, screw Berlin (and we say that as a 30-year resident of the city on the Spree): Montevideo is the city waiting to be discovered by hipsters.
**A remake, of course. The original is from the great Uruguayan (born in the admittedly extremely quiet town of Tacuarembó) Carlos Gardel.

Empire of Ash (Canada, 1988)

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Full movie
as Empire of Ash II:
Aka Maniac Warriors. A lot of films tried to ride on the wave of the original Mad Max films — Mad Max (1979 / trailer), Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior (1981 / trailer) and Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome (1985 / trailer).* Few are still remembered today and some, like this one, a relatively late entry in the genre, weren't even noticed when they came out. (Oddly enough, for a film that no one has ever heard of, it not only spawned a real sequel, Return to Ash III [1989 / trailer] aka Last of the Warriors, but was re-released at one point as a pretend sequel to itself as Empire of Ash II [1988]) — so, in other words, you can watch both Part I and Part II by watching Part II above.
* Of which only the first has aged gracefully. One wonders what the new Mad Max flick, Fury Road (2015 / trailer) is going to spawn for imitations. Where is The Asylum's version? Did we somehow miss it?
We stumbled upon Empire of Ash in a "For Free" crate at a second-hand shop full of crap like David Cassidy and David Hasselhoff CDs — and while we were left speechless at learning that there even was any such thing as a David Cassidy CD, it was the DVD to this movie that really caught our eye:even amongst all that competition, Empire of Ash looked so terribly trashy, so terribly cheesy, so terrible bad that we had to have it. And now that we've seen it, all that we can say is that it met all our expectations and more. Empire of Ash is indeed truly an Empire of Trash. If you like laughably terrible acting, ugly men and overly made-up babes in bad 80s style, maladroit direction, and ridiculous action interspersed with gratuitous nudity and out-of-the-blue scenes that do nothing for the already incompetently told all-over-the-place narrative, this film is for you. It is truly one of those kinds of films that are so bad that it is truly entertaining — despite the occasional dead kid, the concept of which we have learned seems to really disturb some people.
As is the nature of post-apocalyptic films, the events in Empire of Ash take place after some great disaster, assumedly a plague that has caused civilization as we know it to collapse. The tale at hand occurs in a new "nation", for the lack of a better word, called New Idaho, which is ruled by religious fanatics who, going by the "warriors" sent out to patrol the well-paved by-ways and backroads of the incredibly green and fecund-looking forest landscape,* consists primarily of overweight rednecks in leather and motorcycle babes with mile-high teased hair and 80s make-up. When they aren't busy killing LARDS — for "Leukocytes Acquisitors for Remission of Disease", of course — they amuse themselves by hunting and killing all the normal folks who just want to live their own way or wish to leave the religiously oppressive New Idaho. (So, basically, the "warriors" spend their time killing everyone.) LARDS, in turn, when they aren't busy running around out in the open so as to be easily shot, kidnap healthy normal folk and drain them of their blood, which the LARD folk need in order to survive. Basically, no matter which way you turn in Empire of Ash, you're fucked.
* Considering how little "ash" is found in the landscape, the name of the movie is totally inappropriate, Empire of Green is more like it.
Sounds like the framework conditions for a passable plot and movie, but instead what you get is an admittedly violent but completely bungled (usually) unintentional comedy full of what-the-fuck moments and plot turns that usually leaves you laughing on the floor, or at least giggling in your seat. The gratuitous nude shower in a stream scene by the lead female good girl, Danielle (Melanie Kilgour, below) with beautiful brown areolae and eternally perfect make-up, is great, and so desperately needed so that the lead male good guy, Orion (Thom Schioler, above, of Xtro II: The Second Encounter [1990 / scene]), can be kidnapped by LARDs, thus giving way for the female lead to sneak into the LARD city and shoot everyone up and free Orion, an act needed to lead up to one of the most lifeless love scenes ever — a series of events made all the more logical by the fact that Orion basically kidnapped Danielle at gun point and up to her gratuitous shower scene was holding her hostage.
Every event that occurs in the movie — like Danielle just happening to have a trunk full of weapons hidden in the forest despite the fact that she and her sis and grandpa are just passin' through — leads to another similarly logical event. Like when, for example, at one point the big bad girl with teased mile-high blonde hair (Michele Chiponski) gives her orders to her second-in-command decked out in super-skimpy S&M gear (a scene including a shot from just below her butt and between her legs) before, out of the blue, doing a "sexy" dance to the moon. Yep, Empire of Ash is a class act.
Characters come and go and fall out of the sky in Empire of Ash, so you do have to listen a bit to follow what happens and who is who, if you even want to bother. As to be expected in a movie like this, characterization is null, painted instead in broad brushstrokes by non-actors who were probably hired because they were for free. (And indeed, the cast is large — and game: there be a lot of lithe female no-names showing flesh in this flick. Luckily, the men remain dressed, as most are so beefy and hairy as to really be physically unattractive even when dressed, so nekkid they might have made the film vomit-inducing. No Dad Bods here, only Bad Bods.)
Special mention must be given to the Rocket Launcher (David Gregg, who popped up a year later as an extra in Flesh Gordon Meets the Cosmic Cheerleaders [1990 / trailer]), a concept so daft we loved it: he walks into two scenes with a ridiculous piece of head gear from which he launches rockets — not because it make more sense than using a real rocket launcher, but because he can. (He returned in the sequel.) The deep point of the movie is a cringe-inducing remake of Born to Be Wild (original) used for the big final showdown in which five people wipe out all the bad guys, a showdown staged so badly that half the time it looks like the bad guys want to die and thus keep running into the line of shooting on purpose.
Empire of Ash is pure, unadulterated zero-budget exploitation trash: it evidences zero talent across the board — directional, thespian, editing, scripting — but for that has a lot of umph, nudity, and faith in itself. We loved it, particularly since it does have flashes of total inanity. Empire of Ash is a primer for how not to make a good film, and a ludicrous piece of celluloid shit perfect for anyone who likes wasting time on ridiculously entertaining crap.
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