Exploitation December - The Hard Road (1970)

Nothing says "Merry Christmas" like films overflowing with blood and boobs. So, each day for the rest of the month, a film from the Golden Age of Exploitation - the 1970s with spill-over on either side - will be reviewed. This was the heyday of grindhouse cinema, the last gasp of the drive-in, the age when porn went slightly legit, before migrating to VHS and, eventually, the Internet. It was a time when you could see a movie about mud-wresting ninjas (The Life of Ninja), Tube-dwelling cannibals (Raw Meat) and lycanthropic bikers (Werewolves on Wheels). Softcore boobs and hardcore gore, mutant octopus men, planet busting smart bombs, chop-socky imports, showering cheerleaders...everything was being spewed across the screens of America's cinemas.

The first film up is The Hard Road. This is a hard hitting look at the wasted youth culture of the late-60s...naw, it's an excuse for sex, drugs and VD films. Graphic VD films...yikes!

Connie Nelson before she's traveled the Hard Road.

Pam is 17 (yummy Connie Nelson who was also in the awesome Angels Die Hard) and pregnant. She delivers her baby (we get to see some graphic birth footage...yay!) in a home for wayward young women and gives it up for adoption. Her father arranges for her to work as a secretary for Leo (Gary Kent) a sleazy, small-time talent agent. Leo also has a one-way mirror to spy on his secretary. Doesn't everyone? So, Pam meets one of Leo's rock-star clients who introduces her to drugs and sex (well, random sex; she was pregnant after all). She soon hooks up with Jeannie (Catherine Howard) and Jimmy Devlin (John Alderman) her junkie pimp boyfriend, and descends into drug fueled debauchery, tries out prostitution to get Jimmy money for heroin, contracts gonorrhea and finally comes to a bad end while tripping on acid. Don't let this happen to you!

Liz Renay, because this post needed some cheesecake.

This movie is astounding. It isn't good; but it has so much sleazy awesomeness that it should be required viewing. We get dirty junkie hippies going through vomitous withdrawal in jail. We get a graphic - very graphic - VD film along with a showstopping lecture about the dangers of sex. Literally show stopping; the movie suddenly becomes a sexual hygiene lecture. We get drunken, pill-popping mom and dad (Liz Renay and Ray Meritt) wondering where they went wrong with their little girl. There are a couple of extended freakout sessions, in which our heroes run around, scream at nothing, stare at lava lamps, etc. There's nudity, violence, adult language, images of bodies ravaged by syphilis, terrible dialogue, microphone shadows...everything you can ask for in a no-budget exploitation film masquerading as a cautionary tale. This is a must see for everyone.