Short Attention Span Review - Night Call Nurses (1972) - With Candy Striped Spoilers

How can a movie titled Night Call Nurses be bad? On the hand, how can it be good? Maybe it is neitehr; it just is.

Synopsis

Three hot nurses - brunette babe Barbara (Patty Byrne), blonde bombshell Janis (Alana Hamilton) and black chick Sandra (Mittie Lawrence) - are working in the psychiatric ward of a Los Angeles hospital. They have to deal with suicides, drug abuse, flashers and a variety of other nutjobs. Off duty, they party, Barbara goes skydiving, Janice likes to water-ski, have sex, including with patients (Janice hooks up with drug-using trucker Kyle (Richard Young)) and Sandra gets involved with a Black Power revolutionary group; in other words, normal nurse stuff. Barbara is stalked by someone at the hospital and sleeps with her creepy therapist, who is also trying to drive her crazy as part of some ill-defined experiment. Sandra agrees to help Black Power leader Sampson (Stack Pierce) escape from the hospital with the help of Janice and some of his friends in the underground, including Jude (a great Felton Perry) who also hooks up with Sandra. The film ends with a shoot-out, a car chase, truck driving under the influence of every drug known to man and Barbara having it out with her therapist, while at the same time finding out who her stalker is. The final scenes are of our trio happy and reunited. THe last image is of Sandra giving the Black Power salute. The end.

Analysis

For a short movie - 74 minutes - a lot happens. In addition to the events in the synopsis, we also see a couple of drug-induced hallucinations, an epic mental break-down by Barbara, casual racism from cops, a guy pull a bundle of dynamite out of his coat (in a sequence in which there is no reason he'd have that or be able to fit it in his coat)...and a ton of nudity. I think every female actor under the age of 30 takes her top off in the film.

Watching it, the film reminded me of a season's worth of plot devices for Grey's Anatomycondensed into one film with the inclusion of nudity. So, basically, what shows like Grey's should be doing.

The acting is okay - although some of the more "comedic" bits do not work, due to both the writing and the lack of comedic timing on the part of the cast. The film has some nice visual touches. The hallucination sequences are more amusing than psychedelic - Kyle sees his hand turning into mirrors - but are pretty neat in a low-budget way. A suicide that kicks off the film is well done, showing the destruction of a baby doll as a stand-in for what is happening to a young woman who jumps off the hospital roof. While the film is hampered by the budget and time constraints (the film was made in 15 days for $75,000) it doesn't look particularly bad or cheap.

Although there is nudity and the film could be seen as an excuse to show tits, there is more going on. While the story is disjointed and has wild tonal shifts (farcical humor is juxtaposed with graphic violence) it all kind of makes sense by the time the credits roll. While character motivation is lacking for a lot of things that happen, it is no worse than the medical melodramas you find on TV.

The movie lightly pushes boundaries in terms of sexuality. With loosing restrictions on what you could show on screen, films like this - one's that showed female nudity, on-screen sex and reflected loosened sexual mores - became mainstream. Of course, at the same time, there was a growth in pornography - and, briefly, of porno chic - that showed far more than a soft softcore film like Nurses. As an artifact of an era in which what was allowable on the screen was expanding, Nurses is valuable as an example of what filmmakers were putting on-screen. This is particularly true when you consider that even a few years earlier female nudity in a movie would lead to controversy and, often, censorship.

It's also interesting to see just what the filmmakers thought was "hip" and important to audiences in the early Seventies. Drug use, racial tensions, contempt for authorities, casual sex, the rise of the therapy culture, criticism of healthcare costs, and the empowerment of women (mostly being empowered to have lots of sex) are all themes that run through the film.

Verdict

Night Call Nurses is surprisingly fun. While the acting isn't great and the story has a very episodic quality to it that detracts from coherency, overall it is a competently made, entertaining movie. I don't want to oversell it; this is no masterpiece of cinematic storytelling. But, it is worth checking out. Plus, the female leads are all pretty hot and not afraid to show off their boobs. So, there's that too.

Awesome trailer. Simply awesome.

Exploitation December - The Black Gestapo (1975)

The Blaxploitation sub-genre of film flourished for such a short period of time, starting in 1971 with Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song and petering out as the decade ended. The term itself was coined by the NAACP, to criticize movies that the organization saw as pandering to racial stereotypes; later the term was incorporated in film discourse in a less pejorative sense. While the films generally do indulge in stereotypes, this has much to do with their reflection of the cutlure of the time and the need to speak to audiences in terms that they would find popular, identifiable and willing to pay for. While most were crime thrillers (including films like the Shaft trilogy, Across 110th Street and Pam Grier's revenge films; e.g., Foxy Brown and Coffy) there were also horror movies (Blacula, Sugar Hill) Kung Fu movies (Black Belt Jone), historical trash-dramas (Mandingo) and even an animated film, Ralph Bakshi's Coonskin. They were known for having black protagonists, largely black casts, and usually a gritty, urban setting. They also often had black creative teams, something that was groundbreaking in the American film industry. As the Seventies ended, many of these ingredients were incorporated into more "mainstream" films like New Jack City (1991) and Blood and Bone (2009) eventually spawning homages, like Tarantino's Jackie Brown (1997) and the hilarious parody, Black Dynamite (2009)

Not exactly subtle, is it?

Black Gestapo fits into an interesting spot in the genre. It has an overt political message told within the structure of a crime drama. While hampered by a low budget and a cast that is more enthusiastic than professional, the movie is watchable and worth seeking out.

The film takes place in Los Angeles. White mobsters are preying on the black community. A group of khaki clad, red beret wearing black activists organizes the People's Army (led by General Ahmed (Rod Perry)) to push white criminals out of their community. Ahmed advocates a peaceful, community building approach. His second-in-command, Colonel Kojah (Charles Robinson), wants to take more direct action to combat crime and secure power. He forms his own group of thugs within the People's Army, turning them into little more than another gang. They succeed in pushing out the white criminals, but then take over the drugs, prostitution and protection rackets. General Ahmed and Colonel Kojah eventually come to blows, with Ahmed trying to maintain the People's Army as a peaceful agent of change and Kojah preaching race war to his fanatical followers. In a finale that wold not be out of place in an episode of The A-Team of Macgyver, Ahmed infiltrates and decimates Kojah's men with the help of a bag of guns and gadgets. The End.

The Black Gestapo is pretty entertaining. The white mobsters are so evil - a collection of violent, racist thugs - that when they get their comeuppance (including a castration for a rapist) it is satisfying for the audience. The action is pretty well done with decent fight choreography and camerawork. The cast overplays their roles and the characters are little more than caricatures and archetypes. Usually, this is okay in an exploitation film; however, it does detract from the more serious themes of the story, which is really what sets The Black Gestapo apart from it's peers. Yes, there are a lot of boobs (including one of my favorite babes from the Seventies, Uschi Digard) and blood; but there is also an attempt to tell a story with some depth.

I'll take any opportunity to post an image of Uschi Digard.

The story examines the old adage that "power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely." Both Ahmed and Kojah initially have a similar goal; the protection of black community. However, the paths they take are very different. Kojah, raises an army of loyal followers (who have assemblies where he gives rambling speeches while sounds from a Nazi rally play on the soundtrack; this is a message movie, not a subtle message movie) who are successful in pushing the white mob out. They speak the language of violence fluently, something that Ahmed, with his drug rehab clinics and food banks, does not embrace until the end and then only because Kojah tries to have him killed. Kojah quickly grows accustomed to power and wants more. Within a scene or two of forming his first "security squad" he's ready to take over the protection racket in the black community. His ultimate turn to decadence is shown when Ahmed visits his compound (you can tell it's a compound because it has a tennis court and armed guards, hallmarks of compounds everywhere). Kojah is indulging himself with booze and women...including white women. Yep, Kojah has turned his back on black womanhood. Ahmed, meanwhile, is still running his community outreach programs (although all we see is a single free clinic). His girlfriend is a black nurse and he is not interested in traditional power, wanting to create a self-sustaining community, in which drugs, prostitution and criminals - black and white - won't be tolerated. However, he has his own problems. Ahmed makes the point that the People's Army depends on "white money" to function (a grant of some sort). Later, it becomes clear that Kojah has been funneling at least some of the money from the protection racket to the more peaceful aspects of the People's Army. And, in the end, Ahmed has to turn to violence to neutralize the threat of Kojah.

The other overarching theme is an examination of two strategies (violent confrontation and community building) being advocated in the black community (and, really, in all minority communities) when faced with a majority (in this case, white) community that, at best, ignore them (when someone brings up the idea of going to the police about crime, this is scoffed at since the police "ignore" their duty to the black community) and, at worst, exploit and oppress them. Interestingly, neither strategy is found to be satisfactory. The violent approach followed by Kojah leads to corruption and delusion (he gives a speech about raising an army and attacking White American for "vengeance"). The more peaceful approach advocated by Ahmed fails to address both the challenge from Kojah and the violence of the white gangsters/majority community. He can't even get funding for his projects without either turning to "white money" or Kojah. It's a pretty bleak, cynical look at race relations and efforts by the black community to address the imbalance of power vis-a-vis white American society.

Black. Nazis. Riiiiight...

Even though the film tries to tell a story with some depth, there are problems. In addition to the acting, the film has a cheap, murky look to it. Night scenes are poorly lit, to the point that it is often difficult to follow what is happening. Much of the film is presented in master shots, although there are a few attempts to create dynamic images. The Nazi symbolism is heavy handed and out of place. The over dubbing of "Sieg Heil" on the soundtrack during Kojah's rallies, an early fade from a speech being given by Ahmed (in which he says "Martin Luther King had a dream....and it was blasted into eternity with him!") to newsreel footage of marching Nazis and a grinning Hitler and the decision by Kojah to clad his troops in black uniforms, complete with SS hats for the officers are all ham-fisted and unnecessary. The adoption of Nazi regalia, is the most out-of-place thing in the movie. Kojah never expresses any admiration for Hitler and it is strange that a black militant would use the uniform of one of the most racist groups in the 20th Century. Finally, a lot of time - too much - is spent with the white mobsters. They are all repellent - which is okay, since they are the villains - but also, the scenes with them are repetitious and not very interesting. A few scenes to establish who they are and how they operate is really all that is needed. More screen time for the main protagonist (Ahmed) and antagonist (Kojah) to develop their characters would have been welcome.

The Black Gestapo is worth seeking out. Even with the numerous problems cited, it does have a decent pace, a good amount of exploitation elements (boobs and blood) and tries to tell a story with some depth and thematic complexity. Oh, and Uschi's boobs...it has Uschi's boobs...

Exploitation December - I Drink Your Blood (1970)

I read about this movie - often mentioned with its long-time double feature I Eat Your Flesh (1964) - for years before seeing it. It sounded bad-ass: cannibal hippies; rabid construction workers; Lynn Lowry (both cute and odd looking...my favorite combination). Some of the photos promised sweet ass gore; decapitated heads, hacked off hands, lots of heavily armed people foaming at the mouth. It appeared to be great; but, could any movie live up to the image the theater in my brain had been playing for years?

When I finally saw I Drink Your Blood a few years ago, I had my answer. Yep, it was as great as I thought it would be. Great, of course, in the sense that it is a fun, bloody romp. Throw in some nudity and a lot of bizarrely humorous touches and you have the recipe for an awesome viewing experience.

I Drink Your Blood follows the wacky exploits of Horace Bones (Bhaskar Roy Chowdhury, who gives a fun, energetic performance) and his merry band of acid-head Satanists. The film starts with Horace leading a Satanic ritual in the middle of the woods. This involves nudity (Ms. Lowry has a pretty nice butt), chicken sacrifices, dropping acid ("Satan was an acid head," proclaims Horace) and, when the group notices a local girl that had tagged along with a cult member Andy (Tyde Kierney), sexual assault. Everything that goes into making a great party, right?

Lynn Lowry; looks good even after chopping off someone's hand. Hey, she still has both of her hands.

The gang winds up in Valley Mills, a mostly abandoned town, on the verge of being flooded when a local dam is completed. It is also the home of Sylvia (Iris Brooks), the young woman who was attacked, and her family. We are introduced to family friend Mildred (Elizabeth Marner-Brooks) runs the local bakery, which specializes in meat pies, the only food in town, apparently. This becomes important as the film progresses. The cultists take up residence in a run-down, abandoned hotel, have a rat hunt, drop acid and torture one of their compatriots for fun. When Sylvia's grandfather, Doc Banner (Richard Bowler and I will refrain from making Hulk jokes; just too easy) confronts the group, he is fed acid and brutalized. Sylvia's brother Pete, shoots a handy rabid dog and decides to get some pay-back by serving the cultists meat pies injected with infected blood.

The group goes nuts, the disease spreads to the construction workers and mayhem ensues. Who lives? Who dies? Watch it and find out. I will say that the body count is high and includes people you might not think would die.

Kids, this is not the way to get a head in life.

The acting ranges from bad but energetic (Bashkar) to bad but...well, bad. Everyone either chews the scenery or seems to be reading off of cue cards. The cinematography is serviceable. You always know what is going on, night scenes are well lit, and there are a few inventive camera shots. The effects are pretty good, although the more ambitious effects (e.g., a decapitated head) betray the low budget nature of the film.

There are some scenes that stretch the bounds of credulity, even in a movie about rabid hippy Satanists. For example, in one scene, Sylvia and Andy go for roll in the hey (literally and figuratively). This is only a day or two after Sylvia has been raped by Andy's friends (we don't know if he participated, but it is pretty clear he knew what was going on). Why would any writer think this is a good thing to do with a character? And the literal interpretation of rabies leading to hydrophobia results in a great scene with Mildred holding off a pack of rabid construction workers with a garden house!

Actually, most of the movie is pretty funny. Rabid construction workers wear hard hats (safety first). A snake farm owner (who has a "Boah Konstrictor") is killed by a piggy back ride and neck massage. Lynn Lowry's lack of manners is explained with this line: "She don't know better, she's a mute." Little Peter is diabolical, but practices safe field medicine, snapping on latex gloves and using a cap on his syringe when he draws the rabid dog's blood. It goes on like this. The film has a sense of humor about it that helps offset some of the distasteful moments.

So, is I Drink Your Blood worth seeing? Yes it is. This is film s goofy and gory. See it with friends and beer; you will not be disappointed.

Exploitation December - Ilsa, Harem Keeper of the Oil Sheiks (1976)

Fans of exploitation movies are familiar with Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS. The movie that introduced the world - or, at least those parts of the world that don't mind saying "one ticket for Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS please" - to the amazing Dyanne Thorne (see image below as to what was amazing about her), Ilsa spawned imitators (a whole series of Nazisploitation films) and a few "sequels." None are exactly sequels; Ilsa comes to a nasty (and generally fatal) end in each movie. But great boobs and cartoonishly executed sadism never really dies, does it?

Dyanne Thorne had enormous talents. Yay, I've mastered the single entendre.

Harem Keeper is the first Ilsa sequel and the best movie of the series. It has a coherent, if bare-bones, story, a better overall visual style and doesn't have the disturbing Nazi stuff. Instead, we get disturbing ethno-cultural stereotypes. Right, because that's much better...

The delectable Sharon Kelly realizes exactly what kind of movie she's in...and reacts accordingly.

Ilsa runs Sheik Sharif's (Jerry Delony) harem. A new shipment of women has arrived, all kidnapped from the West. They include Nora (the gorgeous redhead Sharon Kelly; for more of Ms. Kelly's work, check out Alice Goodbody; in the Eighties she "graduated" from exploitation movies to hardcore porn.) as the sole heir of the "chain store king of the United States" and Inga, a "Scandinavian love goddess" played by Uschi Digard. Uschi showed up in some of Russ Meyer's films, as well as a other exploitation films in the Seventies and was a popular softcore model at the time. Both were in She Wolf in minor roles. At the same time, American diplomat Dr. Kaiser (Richard Kennedy channeling Henry Kissinger) arrives from the US with Adam Scott, a CIA officer masquerading as Kaiser's assistant (Max Thayer), to negotiate with Sharif for more oil. There's some political back and forth, a sub-plot about the CIA spying on Sharif, etc. None of this plot gets in the way of nudity and depravity; just didn't want you to think this was going to turn into an episode of Firing Line.

As the film progresses, we are introduced to Haji (a Russ Meyer regular) who plays a belly dancer/American spy who is found out and tortured. This leads to some yuckiness (her awesome boobs are squished - a true crime against humanity - and her foot is eaten by ants), but also leads to the introduction of the most insanely disturbing idea in the film; an explosive diaphragm to be used for political assassinations. After Haji breaks under torture, Ilsa test out the device on her. For some reason, this requires strapping Haji to an auto-intercourse machine. I guess, Ilsa wanted her to...wait for it...go out with a bang. Thank you, thank you, I'll be here all week...please remember to tip your waitress.

Uschi Digard makes that tee-shirt look very happy.

In short order, Scott seduces Ilsa, Sharif orders Ilsa to kill Scott, she fails to obey, Sharif has her raped by a leper to teach her a lesson, Ilsa frees Scott, the two lead a revolt, release Sharif's imprisoned nephew, Salim, who takes over and Ilsa subjects Sharif to death by vaginal bomb (also killing the attractive and frequently topless Su Ling). Scott is horrified that Ilsa would sacrifice an innocent girl for revenge (now he's horrified!?!?) and refuses to intervene when Salim has Ilsa imprisoned in the dank cell he was kept in. The final scene shows him throwing her crumbs of bread, while she wastes away. The End.

But, do we really watch a movie like this for geopolitics, palace intrigue and an insightful look into the sad life of a harem girl? Heck no! We want scantily clad (or unclad) chicks and ultraviolence, both of which are in abundance. The "training" of the new arrivals involves some welcome girl-on-girl action with Dyanne Thorne screaming "Lick, bitch!" in a bad German accent. We get to see force feeding (some guys like more meat on the bones and what better way then using a funnel to mash gruel down a woman's throat?), a slave auction, and some medical mayhem (including a gross as heck silicon ass injection ...I do not like needles). There are some scenes that are just disturbing because of what they don't show. One slave girl has her teeth chiseled out because her new buyer doesn't like the "scrape" of them. We just hear clicking and see bloody teeth falling to the ground. This works better - as far as being disturbing - than the more explicit gore sequences, which are laughably fake. To balance out the violence, there is a lot of nudity and all of the women (with the exception of the fat chicks...unless that's your thing...no judgement here) are pretty hot. One point to make: the amount of sex and violence on display is on par with an episode of Spartacus. 40 years ago, if you wanted to see this kind of imagery, you had to trek to a sleazy theater in a run-down urban wasteland. Now, you can just check out basic cable. Of course, the acting and technician proficiency is inferior to what you'll find in the better sex-and-violence shows out today; but, it is amazing how much the grotesqueries of the past are standard fare today.

A magazine cover from 1959. Note the cultural sensitivity...

Much of the imagery comes straight from pulp and men's magazine covers from the Fifties and Sixties, capturing that sense of lurid and ludicrous adventure. While Scott is a one-dimensional hero (he doesn't have much to do, except turn Ilsa do his side with the power of his American penis..."USA! USA! USA!") he does have the jut-jawed look of a pulp adventurer. The harem setting is common to exploitative stories of the last few hundred years, with the lusty, barbaric "Turk" ravishing the fair-skinned women of Europe. The film also incorporates Western stereotypes of the Middle Eastern petro-states as being run by sadistic monsters, who are using their oil wealth to "rape" the West, an idea that had great resonance during the Oil-Shock Seventies. There is also a very low-brow, grindhouse reflection of Edward Said's Orientalism at work here, with the audience being set up both for titillation and revulsion, playing off of culturally ingrained views of the Arab-Islamic world. A final bit of cultural stereotyping; in the end, the local rebels and slave girls need two white, American/Europeans (Scott and Ilsa) to lead them to freedom; or, really a potentially less oppression autocracy.

So, is Ilsa, Harem Keeper of the Oil Sheiks worth seeing? Yes...but...you really have to enjoy movies that are pure exploitation. This film is nothing more than excuse to alternate between scenes of female flesh and gory special effects. This is not a movie with themes. That it reflects complex cultural ideas only serves to show how deeply ingrained those ideas are.

The 19th Century image of the harem.

Exploitation December - The Wild Angels (1966)

Peter Fonda! Bruce Dern ! Nancy Sinatra! That weird, old baby looking guy from the Star Trek episode Miri!

A film with a story both paper-thin and meandering, The Wild Angels exploited America's fearful fascination with the Hell's Angels in the mid-60s. It also kicked off the biker movie craze that reached a critical peak with Easy Rider and burned out in the early-70s. Prior to The Wild Angels you had Brando dressed like a leather-boy taxi driver in The Wild One, but that was about it. After this movie, the roar of Harleys, the crunch of chains against bone and the Mongol war cries of bikers hungry for young flesh and hot blood could be heard in cinemas (and over drive-in speakers) on a regular basis.

Nancy Sinatra trying her best to emote.

The Wild Angels follows the exploits of Blues (Fonda), Loser (Dern) and Monkey (Sinatra) and their not-so-loveable crew of violent misfits. Over the course of a few days, they beat up some Hispanic mechanics, get drunk and joust with palm fronds, party in the great outdoors, have random sex and generally behave like decadent barbarians. Loser has a run in with the cops that leaves him shot and in a hospital. The rest of the gang decides to break him out (why would anyone think that would end well?) and he dies while taking one last toke of reefer. Bruce Dern is awesome in his "alive" scenes, playing Loser as a hyperactive, man-child. He's also pretty good as a corpse.

The Wild Angels, out for a pleasant Sunday drive.

The gang heads to Loser's hometown in Northern California to bury him. They have a wake that ends with booze and drug fueled violence, rape and "anarchism by way of Animal House" speech-making by Blues. When asked what the gang and, by extension, disaffected youth want by the preacher (Frank Maxwell), Blues responds with

We wanna be free! We wanna be free to do what we wanna do. We wanna be free to ride. We wanna be free to ride our machines without being hassled by The Man! ... And we wanna get loaded. And we wanna have a good time. And that's what we are gonna do. We are gonna have a good time... We are gonna have a party.

which to me sums up the whole Sixties "Youth Culture" philosophy. It started out high minded ("Stick it to the Man!") but wound up with everyone wasted and sleeping in their own vomit...aka the 1970s.

We end with Loser being buried, the cops approaching and everyone but Blues fleeing. He knows that game is over and that the festive nihilism he'd been living is as much of a con as mainstream society.

The movie has great acting from the leads (except Nancy Sinatra; she really does not play biker-chick very well). Fonda and Dern are good actors. Dern's American Kamikaze performance is engaging. Fonda conveys some intelligence behind the stoic thug facade. And, he does have an actual character arc, a good sign that something is going on in the writer's (Charles Griffith who had a long career penning B-movies) head. The director, Roger Corman, provides his usual efficient camera work; nothing too flashy, but always clear and geared towards telling the story. There are a few moments that are a bit rough - in particular, there are a couple of "dance" moments (in which the the gang's women gyrate like they have some sort of horrible nervous disorder) that some across as long and laughable. The story/plot is really a series of set-pieces, not tell a particularly compelling tale. That is probably the weakest part of the film; all of the male characters are dirt-bags, engaging in casual violence and rape, thumbing their nose at authority out of a primal infantilism. The women are enablers, who generally revel in their role as property, personal or community. This does contribute to the over-arching theme; that this "lifestyle" is pointless and self-destructive. The movie, for all of it's excessive, is very conservative; the Angel life-style seems superficially fun, but ultimately is a dead end.

Anyway, check it out. This is a superior B-movie and created an entire sub-genre of films.

Exploitation December - Humanoids from the Deep (1980)

When the Gillman spotted Julie Adams in her succulent white, one-piece bathing suit frolicking in his Black Lagoon home, we know what he was thinking of; fertilizing her eggs. How he would do that was left to the imagination; but we all knew what he wanted. And who could blame him? The chicks in monster movies have historically been stone-cold foxes. If I was some radioactive, mutant Hell-beast, I wouldn't mind getting a little B-movie starlet action.

In the Fifties, audiences were not ready for this to be graphically represented; they weren't ready for married couples to be sleeping the same bed. By the Seventies, sensibilities had changed. It should be no surprise that B-movie maestro Roger Corman took this idea - the monster wanting to get it on with the girl - to it's logical conclusion. In Humanoids from the Deep the fishman have their way with our women!

Julie Adams, the gold standard for monster lust objects.

The plot isn't much impediment to the blood and boobs. Growth homrmones have created mutant fishmen from the salmon population off the coast of Noyo, Washington. Local racist Vic Morrow thinks Indians - in the person of Johnny Eagle (Anthony Pena) - are responsible for the trouble in the area, since he is opposed to a new cannery being built. Seventies B-movie staple Doug McClure plays Jim hill, our hero, who thinks that something more sinister is afoot...or afin.

One of the fishmen, just out looking for love.

The gory - and rapey - monster attacks escalate. Lady scientist Susan Drake (Ann Turkel) shows up to offer some exposition - she helped create the mutant salmon for the cennery company - and be menaced by fishmen. It all ends with a massive attack on a seaside festival...or does it? Not really, since our last scene is of one of the monster's victims giving birth to a little fish monster. Aw, look, he has his father's gills! How cute.

This movie is great. There is a ton of gratuitous nudity (shot by Corman after director Barbara Peeters left the film). Every attack on a woman starts with the monster helpfully tearing off the victim's top. "Thanks for being so thoughtful," I think every time a pair of boobs pops into view. There's gore aplenty, starting with a couple of shredded dogs that will upset every animal lover. Don't worry, though; the fishmen soon move on to clawing humans to bloody ribbons. The movie has an appropriately cold and dreary look about it; the town of Noyo seems like the kind of place that no one would miss if it were overrun by salmon-monsters. There's some heavy handed social commentary with the native American angle (Johnny Eagle doesn't want the cannery built for some reason while Vic Morrow is cartoonishly racist) but that doesn't distract from the exploitation aspects of the film.

Doug, you need to open your eyes...it helps with the aiming and stuff.

The monster costumes are pretty cool, given the budget constraints; these days, they'd be CGI and jump around like monkeys on speed. Here, they lumber about when they aren't menacing bikini tops. The acting is pretty bad; Morrow seems bored and drunk. McClure, normally a reliable B-movie hero, phones it in. Everyone else is either bad, bland or there to show her tits. I don't judge; I only report.

I can't recommend this film highly enough. If you like movies that are entertaining in a sleazy, over-the-top way, you'll love this film. Check it out.

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.

31 Days of Halloween (Day 29) - A Movie, A Comic, An App, And A Podcast Walk Into A Bar...

Document of the Dead is a documentary about George Romero, focusing on the production of Dawn of the Dead, but also touching on his work before and after. THe majority was filmed during a weekend in 1979 while Dawn was being filmed. If you are a) a Romero fan, b) interested in the making of the original Dawn of the Dead or c) like to learn about the film-making process you'll want to watch this. You get a lot of insight into Romero's production process as well as the working relationship he had with his his long-time production partner Richard Rubinstein, special effects wizard Tom Savini and other members of the cast and crew. The difficulties in securing funding, the technical complexities of making a movie like this (there's some interesting talk about the problems of lighting a huge, open space like a mall), a look at the make-up effects, and Romero's philosophy on shooting and editing are just a few of the things you'll see. Check it out.

Nancy, 1-part attitude, 1-part chainsaw. All parts hot. Nancy in Hell was an impulse purchase. I saw a couple of panels through the preview feature on comiXology. I thought a busty, chainsaw wielding heroine killing demons in Hell looked promising and picked up the four issues. I'm mostly pleased. The art is appealing, a mix of extreme violence and cheesecake shot. Juan Jose Ryp does a great job drawing drawing monsters and chicks...and monster chicks...in the first two issues. Antonio Vasquez takes over for the final two issues and while it's still good, it is a step down from Ryp's work. Many of the concepts that the writer, El Torres, includes are neat and the whole story has a very "drive-in exploitation movie" vibe to it. However, the dialogue is pretty clunky and the ending more confusing than anything else. If you want a violent, over-the-top action/horror comic and can look past dialogue that, at times, reads like something a thirteen-year-old raised on heavy metal music would think sounds deep, than you'll like Nancy in Hell.

Video Watchdog is my favorite movie magazine and has been for decades. It is the best source for in-depth, thoughtful reviews and articles on those genres of cinema I tend to gravitate towards; horror, science-fiction, exploitation and cult movies, as well as foreign films and older movies that are often overlooked by the mainstream film press. Video Watchdog has now moved into the electronic world with a iOS app offering, as well as versions for the PC and Mac platforms. In addition to a great design, the electronic version (complete with embedded videos and links) is being offered for free when each issue is first released. Old issues will be offered for $3.99. If nothing else, this should convince you to try it out. Go here for the website and here to check out the app.

Looking for an awesome movie podcast? Check out Basasses, Boobs and Body Counts. The focus is on exploitation films of all types, the discussion is lively and fun and the people who run the podcast obviously have an affinity for the films they discuss. Highly recommended.