Most Grindhouse, more Cult films...more stuff!

So, with my recent examining of the PIRANHA series of films and the untimely passing of the legendary Roger Ebert, I began to think back to one of my earliest columns regarding my love of Grindhouse and exploitation films. Consider this Part Two and I dedicate it to Mr. Ebert’s memory, especially since he was so vocal about the whole negative aspect of the Slasher films of the Eighties. But Mr. Ebert had a wonderful skeleton in his closet too…

BEYOND THE VALLEY OF THE DOLLS(1970)  was a semi- sequel to the 1967 VALLEY OF THE DOLLS that quickly became a parody of the original. And it was directed by the legendary cult film director Russ Meyer and co-written by Meyer AND Roger Ebert. It features  an all girl rock band called the Carrie Nations, a cast of oddball characters, a lesbian affair, random nudity, an abortion, a crazy guy named Z-Man who has breasts(!) and ends with mass murder, including a beheading. It has a great soundtrack and some of the weirdest dialogue of the era. Credit THAT to Ebert’s amazing writing ability.

Personally, my favorite Meyer film is FAST, PUSSYCAT! KILL! KILL!(1965). This is the story of three go-go dancers on a wild murderous rampage. Shot in the Mojave Desert and starring cult legends Tura Satana, Haji, Lori Williams and Stuart Lancaster, it is an over the top ride filled with truly gratuitous violence, distorted gender roles and some totally out of bounds dialogue. Lines like “Easy baby, you're almost a fire hazard”, “Alright, you wash... now I'm gonna spin-a-dry you” and my personal favorite “Oh, you're cute... like a velvet glove cast in iron” flow freely like bad Shakespeare. It is such a classic film that White Zombie sampled dialogue from it in THUNDER KISS 65 and BLACK SUNSHINE.

When I think of great dialogue I think of a great American writer who made his name in films. I refer to Terry Southern. And most will go: WHO?  Terry Southern was a great satirical writer who managed to give birth to a world of followers with his style . He is famous for writing great dialogue on such films as DR. STRANGELOVE, THE MAGIC CHRISTIAN, CANDY(with Buck Henry), CASINO ROYALE, BARBARELLA and EASY RIDER, Near the end of his life, he wrote for SATURDAY NIGHT LIFE. But the hidden chestnut in his closest is a little pornographic film called PRETTY PEACHES(1978) that made an instant star out of an actress named Desiree Cousteau.

In a nutshell, this is hardcore take on Southern’s CANDY, which was his take on CANDIDE. Peaches has a fight with her Daddy at his wedding, gets into a car accident and gets amnesia. From there, this ditz is involved in all sorts of involuntary and voluntary carnal hilarity as she tries to regain her memory. In the end, Peaches regains her memory and a commentary on the breakdown of the American family is skillfully slipped into the action. But not before the film wallows in wall to wall sex, soon pretty taboo action and the great, snappy dialogue of Terry Southern. Remember kids that this guy wrote the classic line: “Gentlemen: You can’t fight in here. This is the War Room!”
 

When it comes to exploitation satire, one of my favorite films is PLEASE DON’T EAT MY MOTHER(1973). As least it has been since I first saw the trailer many years ago thanks to everyone’s favorite savior of lost films Mike Vraney.This is a total sexploitation horror-comedy spoof of Roger Corman's 1960 classic film LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS. Lonely Henry Fudd buys an unwanted, but carnivorous plant from a gay florist. Key word: carnivorous. He feeds it hamburgers, dogs, sexy girls and even mom herself. This harder than softcore and softer than hardcore spoof features starlet Rene Bond and director Carl Monson channeling Peter Falk as Officer O'Columbus. It’s fun, sexy and has just enough bad jokes for everyone!

And, as long as we’re talking about pornographic movies, I feel the need to include these two gems, because they are so closely linked to each other. EROTIC NIGHTS OF THE LIVING DEAD(1980) is a pornographic horror film written and directed by legendary cult director Joe D’Amato. A group of tourists end up on a tropical island cursed by voodoo. Throughout we are treated to hardcore sex, blood and guts and a far from happy ending. Going hand in hand is PORNO HOLOCAUST (1981) -yes, I kid you not…THAT IS THE TITLE, which was written by George Eastman and directed D’Amato. In it, a group of scientists go to an island where nuclear tests were done in the 1950s. We get overgrown crabs, mutated animals, and a monster that goes around raping and killing. It’s hardcore fun mixed with blood and guts, which makes both these films SO disturbing.  And they are linked to each other as they were shot at the same time and feature much of the same cast.

And, if I’m going to talk about legendary foreign directors, I need to include Jesus Franco
Franco was a Spanish director whose career took off with the 1961 classic THE AWFUL DR. ORLOFF but never received the acclaim he sought in this country. Moving to France in the Seventies to make more violent and sexual oriented films, many people considered him to be a porn director because of the large number of X-rated films he turned out during his career. Dying April 2 of this year, one of his most famous cult pieces is VAMPYROS LESBOS(1971). It’s about a female lawyer who meets a mysterious Countess who seduces her and turns her into a vampire. Before it is said and done, a doctor takes her under her wing in hopes she will turn him into a vampire. Besides being a good fun lesbian take on DRACULA, it has an amazing soundtrack. So amazing was it that it was included on the record VAMPYROS LESBOS: SEXADELIC DANCE PARTY, which was a HUGE HIT on the British Alternative music charts in the earlier Nineties.

In the Eighties, Italian zombie films were all the rage. One such gem is CANNIBAL APOCALYPSE(1980): an Antonio Margheriti masterpiece starring John Saxon. Saxon is a Vietnam Vet who once got bitten by a U.S. POW infected with a virus making the victim become cannibalistic. Years later, Saxon and the former POW begin a chain of events that end with a murder suicide and a bunch of hungry children looking to feast. Like most Eighties Italian horror films, it is chock full of gore upon gore and you wonder just how far it can go.

Speaking of cannibal films, there is always THE MOUNTAIN OF THE CANNIBAL GOD(1978)-another Italian gem that stars Ursula Andress and Stacy Keach. Andress and her brother hire Keach to trek into the jungles of New Guinea (the film was shot in Sri Lanka)  to find her missing anthropologist husband. The plot gets complicated and crazy when all the members of the expedition reveal their own private agendas, none of which has anything to so with Andress’ husband. They team gets captured by cannibals, who are worshipping the remains of her husband.  Everyone gets tortured, most end up dead and eaten while Andress and Cladio Cassinelli, who plays another explorer named Manolo, escape it all in the end. Besides having torture and gore it features animal cruelty including a live monkey being eaten by a python. 

So, let’s talk about the low budget gore film.  The American grandfather of the genre is Herschell Gordon Lewis and the original benchmark for disgusting was BLOOD FEAST: a 1963 low budget classic that had drive in patrons barfing in their popcorn back in the early Sixties. It is considered by most to be the first splatter film. Crazy caterer Fuad Ramses carves up women so he can resurrect the goddess Ishtar. We have legs being cut off, tongues being yanked out and someone gets scalped, among other acts of gory depravity. In the conclusion, Fuad ends up getting squished in a garbage truck, leading to the infamous line:  "He died a fitting end, just like the garbage he was." Tame by today’s standards, the splatter effects in this film, and most of the Lewis gems that followed, including THE GORE GORE GIRLS, TWO THOUSAND MANIACS,  and COLOR ME BLOOD RED, brought him the well deserved title of “The Godfather of Gore”. And they are worth watching just for the bad acting!

By the way, the Lewis film to see is LINDA AND ABILENE. It is a 1969 lesbian Western shot on the infamous Spahn Ranch not long before it was taken over by the Manson Family. Not a great film, it is a must see for historical purposes. It was recently released on Blu-Ray/DVD THE LOST FILMS OF HERSCHELL GORDON LEWIS which features LINDA AND ABILENE, ECSTACIES OF WOMEN and BLACK LOVE, all from the original negatives.

I have said many times before that I get to thank Mike Vraney and SOMETHING WEIRD VIDEO for piquing my interest in many classic exploitation films by putting out entire collections of horror/exploitation trailers. One such trailer led me to find the infamous LOVE CAMP 7(1969). Directed by Lee Frost and written by Wes Bishop and Bob Cresse(who has many sexploitation films to his credit and gets to over-act as a sadistic Nazi commandant), it is a women in prison film with a twist. It follows two female British officers who go undercover in a Nazi camp where the inmates serve as prostitutes for the Nazis. From there we get blood and gore, copious amounts of gratuitous full frontal nudity, torture, and rape. It takes the women in prison genre to a whole new level of disgusting. It’s ILSA with a mostly female cast of non-actors. Cresse would go on to star as Sgt. Felipio Latio in THE EROTIC ADVENTURES OF ZORRO.


Another thing I finally got exposed to thanks to SWV was the genre of the MONDO films. Basically, they are pseudo-documentaries that led to the Shockumentary genre. In the earliest days, they have used staged sequences as “actual documentary footage”. For example: MONDO BALORDO featured a slave market that actually was shot in front of the cave used so prominently in ROBOT MONSTER(it’s in Bronson Canyon in Los Angeles). The most famous of the Mondo films is the 1962 Italian film MONDO CANE. What seems to be a travelogue of world images quickly become glimpses designed to shock Western audiences. It has a little bit for everybody. There are pigs being slaughtered, dogs being skinned alive for their meat, and sharks being force fed sea urchins. We get drunk Germans, drunk Japanese men at a massage parlor, and hula dancers. Oh yeah: we also have bull fights and cargo cults. It is one of the most bizarre and confusing films you will ever see and led to the film’s theme, The movie's theme song, "More” being nominated for an Academy Award for Best Song in 1963.

 
The Mondo genre gave birth to the Shockumentary genre which brought us the legendary FACES OF DEATH(1978). Much of the legend involves the fact that this is a Mondo film that revels in presenting death. Over the years, the film has been banned in many countries

including the United Kingdom. Over the years, it has also been revealed  by the make-up artist for the film that approximately 40% of the human deaths are fakes. Either way, you get napalm bombing, World War II footage, slaughterhouse video and baby seals being clubbed to death. The most infamous (and real) scene involves footage of a motorcyclist killed by a tractor trailer and it features paramedics cleaning up brain matter and such off the highway. It led to a whole series of sequels and a documentary on the making of the series. It has even led to copycat films such as TRACES OF DEATH(1993) which featured far more real newsreel footage, such as the televised suicide of Pennsylvania Treasurer Budd Dwyer and the death of Vic Morrow during TWILIGHT ZONE THE MOVIE. Personally, I would rather watch old Driver’s Education films than ANY of these. 

But thinking of John Landis(referencing TWILIGHT ZONE THE MOVIE), I have to include the gem that no one really remembers. Hey-John Landis: ANIMAL HOUSE, THE BLUES BROTHERS, AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON, KENTUCKY FRIEND MOVIE(if you have NEVER SEEN THIS, YOU MUST!!!) and AMAZON WOMEN ON THE MOON. Really? Never heard of that one? Well, you are truly missing a gem. It’s an anthology, parody film very much in the vein of KENTUCKY FRIEND MOVIE that features 21 different sketches and directing contributions from five different directors, including Joe Dante (see my PIRANHA blog). The theme revolves around WIDB-TV having problems with the later night movie it is airing (this awful science fiction movie called AMAZON WOMEN ON THE MOON which stars Steve Forrest and Sybil Danning) so they resort to showing PSAs, commercials, trailers, and talk shows. Every now and then, between infomercials and clips from other movies, they resort to showing the main feature. The film is populated with all sorts of stars and near stars including Andrew Dice Clay, Robert Picardo, Paul Bartel, Rosanna Arquette, Carrie Fisher, Michelle Pfeiffer, Arsenio Hall, Phil Hartman, Bryan Cranston and even FAMOUS MONSTERS OF FILMLAND’s own Forrest J. Ackerman. My favorite bit is a PSA featuring David Alan Grier and B.B. King for "blacks without soul"

While not as laugh out loud funny at KENTUCKY FRIED MOVIE (a review down the road…I promise!), it has a wonderful Eighties feel to it and, if you ever got the chance to watch true late night television, back in the days BEFORE cable, this is a true love fest. Hey-I spent three years in my teens spending every Saturday night at my grandmother’s house watching Hammer horror films from midnight until 5 A.M. You would have been AMAZED at what often ended up being run during those hours.

Anyway, that is all from me for now. Maybe another movie review in a few or I may be back to THE NEW 52. It all depends on how the mood strikes me. Until then, be well and enjoy yourself. Because, what else are you going to do-be miserable?!