KRIS GILPIN RARE INTERVIEWS: H.G. LEWIS

HERSCHELL GORDON LEWIS INTERVIEW by KRIS GILPIN

(Originally appeared in The Draculina Fear Book 1992 By Hugh Gallagher).

When Herschell Gordon Lewis did the following interview with Kris Gilpin, he was at the peak of reborn interest in his work. With the release of Dan Krogh’s book. THE AMAZING HERSCHELL GORDON LEWIS, and the advent of video -Herschell Gordon Lewis was in the lime light with horror fans, doing conventions and film festivals. He spoke of possibly returning to the director’s chair but, over six years later, such a return has yet to develop. In fact, this interview, first published in January, 1986, is still as up-to-date as it was when first published in DRACULINA #2. 

(Erok here, I'm very excited to present this rare interview which was taken from archive.org and emailed to me by Kris himself. We're all still reeling over the shock of hearing the news about Mr. Lewis' death, I've been an obsessive fan ever since I saw and was disturbed by all the hideous big box VHS's at Florida video stores in the 5th grade (1986 to give you some context). I even heard in an interview that his favorite chicken joint in Miami was Bojangles and I staked it out hoping to bump into him--what a weirdo I was and still am I guess. I hope everyone enjoys this incredible interview and keeps the legacy going by sharing your stories about HGL with us on the Twitter and FB page. He was one of a kind and will be missed).

From 1960 to 1972 writer-producer-director Herschell Gordon Lewis earned his reputation as

the man theater owners and other investors would turn to when they wanted their modest production dollars stretched furthest. Herschell, a brilliant businessman, produced nudies, Southern good-old boys epics and even children's pictures and, along with his partner David Friedman, invented the modem Gore Flick in 1963 with the infamous BLOOD FEAST. He followed that virgin viscera with, among other fun diversions such as SHE-DEVILS ON WHEELS, JUST FOR THE HELL OF IT and SOMETHING WEIRD, half a dozen more gore films. I laughed my adolescent ass off upon discovering Lewis's THE WIZARD OF GORE and THE GRUESOME TWOSOME at a Miami drive-in and on Saturday afternoon of June 29th, 1985, grabbed the chance to conduct a telephone interview with the Wizard himself in South Florida, where he now lives.

KRIS GILPIN: You made 37 films in only 12 years. Was there ever a type of film you wanted to make but never got the chance to?

HERSCHELL GORDON LEWIS: Sure, but I never had the budget to even indulge myself in a fantasy of that sort. There was a script I had for years and years, I have no idea whatever happened to it called THE MUSIC OF MR. MUNDY. a children’s picture about a gentle old man who runs a grade-school orchestra and, like most grade school orchestras, when they get past "Old McDonald Had a Farm" they’re in great confusion, but to him it sounds like the Chicago Symphony Orchestra Well, one of the children in the group has a father in the recording business and he’s fascinated with the bad sound of this orchestra, so they make a recording and they’re an instant smash. But they're a smash in a way that Florence Foster Jenkins was a smash: they are freaks because the music is so bad. I found the thing completely charming, but never was able to get anyone interested in it, including myself; I was interested in it but I couldn't see it as a commercial enterprise. Really, it's the kind of story that would make a nice television special, but I never made it.

BAD MUSIC, Surely you can't be talking about garage punks The Faded Blue?!

KG: Did all your films show a profit?

HGL: I can’t answer that because I made a number of films for other people. My films tended to show a profit because we did lick the problem of inflated production costs. Those who hover around the periphery of the business could easily be astounded by the amount of waste involved, for example, the director who is insecure and whose most common remark is, "Let's make one more.” Or who shoots the entire scene through with a long shot and then a closeup on each principal, and winds up with hundreds of thousands of feet of film, And, obviously, there is the problem in the motion picture business of union featherbedding, which is a problem that pertains to most craft guilds, and there's also the problem of overpaid, under talented people and, in each of those instances, my films dealt in well-marbled space with a lot of fat cut off of them.

KG: How many shots did you average per take?

HGL: One point four.

KG: How do you remember the nudie era?

HGL: Those films were lots of fun to make. BOIN-N-G was my favorite film from that era because it had a sense of humor; it was a satire of that whole era of film making. THE PRIME TIME and LIVING VENUS [Herschell's first two pictures] were mangled in distribution; the distributor went bust owing the production company a lot of money. I had my entire fortune sunk into the pictures and I was literally out of business. So, when Dave Friedman and I made the next picture, THE ADVENTURES OF LUCKY PIERRE (chuckles) we were the whole crew; we had no film to cut out at the end of that shoot; we used every foot of film we bought. And the film was a smash. That can make you very cynical toward the whole theory of film making, because I felt LIVING VENUS was a good, well-made picture, with a union crew by the way, and it cost 6, 7 times as much as LUCKY PIERRE which was color. But look at the comparative results: LUCKY PIERRE supported Friedman and me for the better part of the year [1961], and for years afterward it was bringing in revenue. And in the entire life span of LUCKY PIERRE I think we only made eleven prints; we played them mercilessly; every print was in use all the time. Prints would come back as junk and we'd splice around the horrible tears and send it out again.

KG: Who did Karen Black play in THE PRIME TIME?

HGL: She had a minor role; I've forgotten the name of the character, but she played herself, literally. I notice she still does, she had lines and she had a screen credit as "Karen Black". That was her first picture; she was still a student at Northwestern.

KG: What was BLACK LOVE about, and what do you think of the way that film turned out?

HGL: Well, I have no comment to make about BLACK LOVE. I shot that for a fellow named Bob Smith who, as I recall, owned a bunch of Baskin-Robbins ice cream parlors on the south side of Chicago. I supplied only the technical aspect of film making; he was the producer. I also put the campaign together for him, which was irresistible; BLACK LOVE, from the view point of box-office draw, was an absolute smash, but I didn't own it; I was for a while, unwillingly really, the distributor. I paired BLACK LOVE with one of my pictures, MISS NYMPHETS ZAP-IN [a soft-core version of LAUGH-IN], which had a sense of humor and some production value, and the combination was irresistible, BLACK LOVE was startling, I guess is the word. We did well with that combination but ultimately, Bob Smith disappeared and that was the end of that deal. I had no regrets about it.

WAKE UP Mr. Softee!

KG: Your films were highly regarded in France for a while. When did this come about?

HGL: One day someone sent me a copy of a French magazine called IMAGE ET SON [PICTURE AND SOUND] in which there was a listing of classic horror films. BLOOD FEAST was in there bet-

ween PSYCHO and REPULSION, which I felt was rather stratospheric heights for a modest

picture like BLOOD FEAST. I think the French were the first to recognize the historic value of

BLOOD FEAST, which nobody else did; I know there was historic value from the viewpoint of

curiosity, but not from the viewpoint of actual film history. BLOOD FEAST was the first picture in

which people died with their eyes open, in which blood spurted, but that’s not like firing on Fort Sumter or Kennedy’s inauguration speech; it's not one of the milestones that one points to. But the French did; bear in mind that the French had the original GRAND GUIGNOL, the bloody [stage] show that ran for, I guess, the better part of a century, and ran to packed houses with their faked slashings of throats, and so on. And in France there was a recognition factor [of my films] which just didn't seem to bubble to the surface anywhere else. That was in the latter part of the 1960's; in this country, I vanished into oblivion during the 1970's.

Kramer, what do I know about baking a shirt? I got an Egytian pizza cooking!

KG: I find that today’s gore flicks take themselves too seriously; they lack the ingrained sense of humor which made yours such fun.

HGL: Absolutely correct, sir! And I think that's the difference: these films take themselves seriously, so that each one becomes "another one of those." It sounds like sour grapes; I don't mean it that way at all. I just today put in the mail to somebody a new script called HERSCHELL GORDON LEWIS'S GRIM FAIRY TALES. and it isn't “another one of those." If we make that picture it will be (chuckles) a return to a different kind of film making. In all this time, with all the gore and all the horror and all the attention to prosthetic devices, and all the mechanical manipulations and money spent on special effects, nobody has attempted to penetrate into the happy philosophy of how the stuff makes sense to somebody sitting in the theater. They're more concerned with technique than frightening them, or drama.

KG: At the Drive in New York last November you mentioned an effect you always wanted to shoot but never had the chance to. What was that?

HGL: The Ultimate Effect. That’s where we simply rip somebody to pieces, starting with the outer skin and just work our way in until there’s nothing left but a pile of glop. I was going to do that in THE WIZARD OF GORE but we had mechanical problems and people didn't bring me the props they were supposed to bring, and we just didn't do it. But that's what I regard as the Ultimate Effect; where we simply tear somebody to pieces! THE WIZARD OF GORE was a jinxed film in production, by the way; everything that could go wrong went wrong with THE WIZARD OF GORE Fred Sandy, my partner, and our main actor had a terrible battle as we were rehearsing the first shot; the guy stormed off in a rage - a lot of guts for an out-of-work actor. So I took Ray Sager off the crew and he became the Wizard of Gore. Ray has the manual dexterity of a quadruple amputee; he was supposed to play the part of a mad magician, but Ray is a consummate actor so he brought it off. Also, we lost two days' shooting on the Mitchell camera. Plus, I always made the electrical hook-ups on location because I was quite used to it. So I was hooking this up and this fellow, Roger Strauss, came up and said, “I know how to do that! I’ve watched you enough times." So as he made the hook-up the whole box caught fire and they threw us out of [that person's house]. And many of the effects that I wanted didn't come off.

Well at least something went right today!

KG: What was it like directing Henny Youngman in THE GORE-GORE GIRLS (aka BLOOD ORGY)? Did he bring a lot of laughs onto the set?

HGL: No; hardly. Henny Youngman brought a lot of confusion onto the set. Nice, nice fellow, but he requires more direction than I was prepared to give, I was never - thank God - infected with this Celebrity Syndrome, where you use a celebrity because he’s a celebrity. Henny Youngman talks too fast; after 20 minutes of this, I said to him, "What we're gonna have to do is put English subtitles under your speeches." We finally got him to slow down; he could not have been more cooperative, but, for me and my crew, he was just another guy on the set. And we only gauged people by one criterion; did he know his lines and stand in the right place or not? And after an hour or two he knew his lines and he stood in the right place, so I have a profound regard for the guy (chuckles)

If my mother knew I did this for a living, she'd kill me. She thinks I'm selling dope (actual Henny joke!)

KG: What merchandising did you do on your films?

HGL: We novelized BLOOD FEAST, 2000 MANIACS! and COLOR ME BLOOD RED of those, I wrote the one on 2000 MANIACS!; I didn't write the novelization of BLOOD FEAST and I don't remember whether I wrote novelization of COLOR ME BLOOD RED. And we had 45 r.p.m. records of the theme music from 2000 MANIACS! and THE PILL/THE GIRL, the BODY AND

THE PILL, 1967, I wish I could come across some of those one of these days. We used to send them out to radio stations when our pictures would open up in town; I have no idea whether they were effective or not.

KG: Was writing the films as fun as, I take it, making them was?

HGL: Well, writing is not exactly fun; writing is a solitary, and very disciplined, proposition. Film making is a crowd activity, and often undisciplined. And for the person who is able to carry his discipline from the keyboard to the lens-my opinion is that great rewards are justified. Also, on our sets, everybody had a good time, but we knew at 10 o'clock Monday morning what we were gonna be shooting at 4 o’clock Thursday afternoon. Otherwise it's a waste, especially when you're using somebody else's money.

KG: The storyline for AN EYE FOR AN EYE sounds intriguing [a blind man gains ESP when he is given a dead man's eyes]; I understand the film was never released. Why is that?

HGL: I don't know. I have heard that too, and then I have heard from people who said they saw it. We sold that thing to Abbott Schwartz out of Minneapolis who moved it out of our cutting room, almost in a matter of an hour from the time the deal was made. That picture was in the middle of cutting, and that's the last I saw of any of it-footage, anything. And from that moment to now, I have no idea where the negative is, if the cutting was finished, if prints were made or what; I don't know.

KG: Was it fun to appear in front of your camera as well as being behind it?

HGL: Oh sure; anybody [gets a kick out of it]. I used the name Sheldon Seymour or, sometimes,

Seymour Sheldon, but not as [an acting] screen name, I don't believe. I appeared in THE LIVING

VENUS and A TASTE OF BLOOD, and that was because I had to have somebody [in British

accent] "with a limey accent, I did, and the fellow I hired didn't show up," and there was nobody else on the crew who could even remotely attempt a British accent. So we chopped some hair off of Bob Vercruse and made me a big moustache and I pulled a stocking cap way down over my face. It was not an attempt to play a Hitchcock; I wasn't trying to get a bit part in my own movie.

KG: SOMETHING WEIRD was an interesting, off-beat movie. How did that strange storyline come about?

HGL: That came' from a mixture of input from myself and Jim Hurley, who was [an ESP] nut. He had been involved with a man named Peter Hurkos who was, supposedly, a genuine psychic. So, Hurley showed up with the notion and, as I remember, also the backing for SOMETHING WEIRD, which was a pure exercise in clinical extra-sensory perception; and I convinced him to make the picture a little more commercial by adding the element of witchcraft. SOMETHING WEIRD was also, for me, an exercise in my mastery over the Mitchell camera, because just about all the effects were done in camera, such as a ghost walking down the aisle of a church, and a man disappearing through a wall; I simply did it in the camera. So I was very pleased with being able to meet the challenge of SOMETHING WEIRD. We paired that film with, I believe, THE GRUESOME TWOSOME, and they did very, very well together and, as I remember, after about a year of this, Jim Hurley became irritated with having his film "defiled" by having THE GRUESOME TWOSOME as its companion feature, and he withdrew his picture, and we simply went along with THE GRUESOME TWOSOME without SOMETHING WEIRD. But I share your view, I like that picture.

Corky on a very special Thanksgiving episode of Life Goes on.

KG: How did you manage to work an actual birth scene into SIN, SUFFER AND REPENT?

HGL: (laughs) SIN, SUFFER AND REPENT was owned by a guy named Jim Somebody out of

Toledo, Ohio, and he was an old time exploitation film man. He had picked up a British film - the title of which is lost in obscurity on venereal disease, and reached a point where he couldn’t get it played anymore. It wasn't a badly made film, but it didn't make sense; it was a World War II-vintage kind of picture. And he came to me and he said, "Let's change this into a birth-of-a-baby film", and that is exactly what we did by judicious cutting, by shooting some hospital scenes and by removing some dialogue, sticking in some dialogue, over-dubbing other dialogue and sticking in a birth scene, (chuckles) And that’s all there was to that, and he had a very playable picture and he made a lot of money out of it.

KG: I wanted to know some statistics, such as your most successful picture, longest and shortest

shoots and budgets...

HGL: Well, BLOOD FEAST was our No. 1 winner, I would imagine; I can't think of anything that came remotely close to it in terms of dollar gross. We were carrying money away from BLOOD FEAST in bushel bags. The shortest shoot was LUCKY PIERRE; we shot it in four days. Our shoots always averaged somewhere between 12 and 14 days of principal photography, and there may have been a couple of days of pick-up. As to which was the actual longest, it may have been A TASTE OF BLOOD, because that picture runs two hours. By the way, Jimmy Maslin told me that he knows somebody that owns A TASTE OF BLOOD [Herschell's vampire epicj and is planning to release it on video tape. The largest budget would either be THE GORE GORE GIRLS or A TASTE OF BLOOD, and the smallest would again have to be LUCKY PIERRE for (chuckles) a very low five figures.

KG: Speaking of video, have you gotten a cut from the recent video releases of your films (SOMETHING WEIRD, THE GRUESOME TWOSOME, THE WIZARD OF GORE, etc?)

HGL: Nope. People have sent me copies of BLOOD FEAST, 2000 MANIACS!, SHE-DEVILS ON

WHEELS and COLOR ME BLOOD RED, though. Someone also sent me a bootleg tape of

THE GORE GORE GIRLS, but there's a big hunk missing out of it; it's like Nixon's Watergate tapes. There’s a gap in it where the screen goes white for about 20 seconds.

KG: Why did your film making stop in 1972?

HGL: It stopped for a whole bunch of reasons. One was. we had run the cycle; the major studios were starting to make [bloody] films; it was harder and harder to get playing time. Then. I had all my assets put together in very complicated circumstances in an advertising agency, and my biggest client went bust; everything went. I got a divorce; the whole thing was a mess, and I wound up with very, very little, and it simply was not an opportune time to make pictures. Furthermore, I really felt that [gore] films had shot their bolt, which merely shows how cloudy the crystal ball can be.

KG: Were you happy with the book, THE AMAZING HERSCHELL GORDON LEWIS?

HGL: It's not mine to be happy or sad about. I was stunned by the academic research involved in it. First of all, I never knew Dan Krogh [who worked with Lewis on some of his pictures] was keeping score; he apparently amassed a library of information and visual that far surpassed anything I ever might have had. Now, I had some very nice stuff, some 40 by 60s, one sheets and when I got that divorce in the late 1970's, in a fit of pique, I guess it was, my ex-spouse destroyed it all. At least I assume she did; I never saw it. I'm no longer bitter or bothered because I came out by far the winner in that deal; I am now far more happily married than I ever could have been [before], so shed no tears. But as the book goes, there are some factual errors in there, only because there was information to which Dan couldn't be privy. But I was certainly honored; imagine having a book about oneself. It's just not the kind of thing that anyone expects to have happen unless he’s a poet laureate.

The Prince of Puke meets the Godfather of Gore.

KG: What have you done since?

HGL: I am a direct-response writer; I write for a living - I am considered, according to trade

sources, "the Rolls Royce of writers.” And I live very well, and I spend my days on the tennis court or in the pool or sitting in the spa, or at the keyboard. I work with clients all over the world; I give speeches all over the world. And I regard it as leading the good life so, to the consternation of some detractors, I am not lying in the gutter, bleeding. But everybody keeps asking me, "Are you ever gonna make another movie?" The answer is always the same: maybe. But it seems to be getting closer; it depends on who comes up with a deal. Dave Friedman, my old partner, tells me he is talking to some major studios about [getting back together again]. There’s a young chap in Arkansas named Jeff Hogue for whom I have just finished the GRIM FAIRY TALES script; he has authorized and paid for the screenplay, and I may or may not direct that script. I've got my Ultimate Effect written into there, and there are some other gore scenes in there which make anything we've done before seem childlike. Whenever I make a film it's gonna have that effect, because I've been brooding over not having done it. Then there's Jim Maslin in California, the fellow who owns the videotape rights to many of the old films, who has a script he and Eric Caiden wrote called BLOOD FEAST 2, and they are talking to me about directing it. I don't think they've completed their financing, but he says they

may be within weeks of doing that. So I very well may make another picture, and it may go into production before the end of this year, but I make no flat statements as of today because, as of today, no deals have been set. All three projects would be shot in 35mm color for [in addition to domestic theatrical or videotape release] foreign release, which is far more important than it used to be. So you need 35 for that. And I have a book coming out from Prentice-Hall in New York in October [Herschell has also written bestselling books on advertising, including DIRECT MAIL COPY THAT SELLS, his bestselling title] which is a re-edited version of a book published about 5 or 6 years ago called HOW TO MAKE YOUR ADVERTISING TWICE AS EFFECTIVE AT HALF THE COST. And I have a contract in hand for one more book, which is gonna take me a year to write. It’s my magnum opus, and it may be the last book I'll write, but it's going to be a dilly!

Spine (1986)

SPINE (1986)

Directed by John Howard and Justin Simmonds

Review by Michael Hauss

     Since I’m on a roll of watching shit-on-video releases, I figured one more go at it wouldn’t retard my fucked up brain any more than seeing Thor all naked in "ROCK AND ROLL NIGHTMARE"  (1987) already did. All this to appease the savage editor Erok Hellhammer here at Theater of Guts, who keeps recommending these shit-fests for me to review, saying “it takes a special and I emphasize Special kind of person to understand these types of films.” Erok would go on to save his ass by saving that I was the “Jerry Warren” of the film reviewing world, pretty solid compliment right there I’d say.

     This 1986 shot-on-video (aka 'shit-on-video' or SOV) boasts a nutbag who goes around killing and exposing the spines of nurses, hence the title. The lead in this film, R. Eric (don’t call me Aldous) Huxley, plays slasher Lawrence Ashton and I'd swear it's actually old’ Bocephus himself, Hank Williams Jr. This dude could be his twin.

Hank Jr.'s evil twin demonstrates the "do's"
and "dont's" of the swinger lifestyle.

     The film is, on the technical side, a piece of shit which has the camera shoved right up the actors' asses or in their faces. The sound is like listening through a set of cans with a string through them, the way Alfalfa, Spanky, Buck Wheat and I used to call each other back in our gang days.

     Back to Hank Williams... I mean, R. Eric. He has this psycho thing down pat. He does a lot of emoting and acting angry, but also tries to be the cool composed spree killer we’ve grown to know and love, like Jason but without the hockey mask. Or that fucknut from SLUMBER PARTY MASSACRE (1988).

These bitchin' shades are my hockey mask,
and this luxurious mane is my tragic deformity.

    The thing about this film is that it actually has a very good exploitation actress in it. She deserved much better than this fate. The actress Janus Blythe appeared in a number of low budget exploitation and horror films including Ruby in the Wes Craven classic "THE HILLS HAVE EYES" (1977). She would follow up that film with a small part in the gooey but fun exploitation flick "THE INCREDIBLE MELTING MAN" (1977) and would appear again as Ruby in the sequel "THE HILLS HAVE EYES PART 2" (1984). Unfortunately, Janus would see her on-screen career end in 1991, but not before she accepted a part in this stinker. I could see the producer of this film saying to Janus, “We’ll give you one hundred dollars for the three-day shoot, free Shoney’s down on route 6 for breakfast, lunch and dinner, and book you into the Motel 6, and, We’ll leave the light on for you!”

Motel 6? I've hit the big time at last!

    I'm not sure how they got an actress with any credits at all to appear in this mess, but some notable hacks have slunk to SOV appearances. Erok Hellhammer’s favorite actor Michael J Pollard appeared in "SLEEPAWAY CAMP 3"(1989), and there's porn star Amber Lynn’s star turn in "THINGS" (1993).  The rest of the cast seems to have no other credits to speak of as far as I can ascertain except R. Eric Huxley, who has a few credits listed besides this. Surprisingly, not in any biopics of Hank Williams Jr.

     John Howard, one of the two directors listed on this film along with Justin Simmonds, does have a few other directorial credits on his resume. He has some porn credits and did a handful of films starring Linnea Quigley, including "SCORPION" (1986), "STALKED" (1986), "AVENGED" (1986) and FLASH (1987), which need further investigation.

"Is it that much fun to hurt someone / Oh please tell me why, dear!"

     The killer, all decked out in his reflective aviator glasses and brandishing a switchblade knife he strokes at times, is killing only nurses. He hog ties them and as they struggle, the rope from their feet to their neck tightens and it strangles them. Then he knifes them a bunch of times and cuts the back open to expose the spine. The killings are all related and identical except when the killer raped one of the women. Each murder scene has the name “Linda” written in blood on a wall. 

Alice in Bondageland.

     The police and forensic units in this film are laughably generic, and it’s like the actors who played the cops had no clue on how to author the parts. It's as if they were children playing a game of Cops and Robbers. The police presence is nil and the crime investigation units consist of one or two guys. The police struggle with finding the name of the suspect until their computer spits out the name of Lawrence Ashton. I mean damn, couldn’t the makers of this film watch an episode of Streets of San Francisco, Quincey, or Police Story, to figure out how police procedure and crime scene investigations go? 

The crime computer says she was killed by
someone named Bocephus, and it's never wrong.

     Carrie Longan (Janus Blythe) and Leah Petralla (Lise Romanoff), whose home the killer has invaded, are in danger from this bloodthirsty maniac. Will the fuck-nuttedly stupid police get there in time before he kills two more nurses? Better yet, who cares?

     This movie makes the SOV "555" (1988) look like it belongs in the horror hall of fame. It is just plain awful, no two ways around it. R. Eric Huxley turns in a decent enough performance but the rest of the cast just stinks the place up, including Janus Blythe. Even at seventy-three minutes this film was overlong and taxing on my brain. I think in closing that if I didn't hate Hank Williams Jr. so much then I may have enjoyed this a bit more. Shit, who am I kidding, I hated it as much as old Hank... not more, but damn close. 

This is spinal tap.

Pinball Summer

Pinball Summer (Flipper Girls, Pick-up Summer) Directed by George Mihalka, starring Joey McNamara (1980).

Just one year later, this director made My Bloody Valentine, one of my favorite Great White North slashers. What makes that film so enjoyable is how ear assaultively Canadian it is--I mean heavy on the ooots And ooses on words like "house" and "about" plus gratuitous Molsen and Moosehead beer swilling. Since this one (which is also super Canadian) just played at the SF Mission Drafthouse, I figured I'd dial it up on YT and check it out, also I think I heard Hollywood Highs #1 fan Paul "Sharkey", my best pal and Porky's fan fiction aficionado mention it. That dude knows bad teen schlock, he has a degree in Frat-onomics (he even teaches cartooning at Oakland's 3 O' Clock Rock) and I always trust his recommendations. I urge everyone to see it in the theater though, I'd imagine it will be a crowd pleaser.

The only character I sort of liked in a sea of retarded cut off wearing dicks and bra less butt cheek flashing babes is Whimpy (Joey McNamara). This runty virgin has no idea how to dress properly (his belly is always hanging out) and he wears a sailor type hat with a King Crimson button, (brownie points for that shit)! Bert the biker attempts to get him laid while fucking with the main characters. I was dying during one part where Whimp attempts to have sex with a hooker and she gets grossed out by his smelly socks.

you really gotta hear Lark's Tongues in Aspic on meth and screaming yellow zonkers aye?

Speaking of music, the soundtrack is power pop lite puke by Jay Boivin and Germain Gauthier. The one thing this plotless sexploitation flick has going for it is all of the girls are super hot! All the guys led by Greg (Michael Zelniker) and Steve (Carl Marotte), two white dudes with Afros are typical leering potential rapists. I guess Whimpy would be the I Spit On Your Grave Mathew character, but thankfully it never goes beyond light and airy beach party fun. There's a greaser guy named Burt who's busty girlfriend works at a burger joint that everyone is constantly eating at. She was in a few other Canuxploits like The Blue Man, with Karen Black by this same director and even the mainstream Fly remake as Jeff Goldblum's trophy lady for melting a bikers wrist during that famous arm wrestling scene. Bryan Thomas even waxes nostalgia like on the Night Flight site.

Let's reenact that Jodie Foster gang rape scene in The Accused

There's more scenes of people spying and secretly listening while others have sex, smoke dope or hang out at the drive in then in any other film I can think of (maybe it's influenced by the recent Watergate scandal)?

It's never boring even though it's extremely plotless and derivative. There's a stubby jew-froed manager of the arcade named Pete who looks like Cousin Larry and the singer from Air Supply if they mated, the big finale contest offers a trophy and a date with the pinball queen. Man, in the 70's everything seemed to revolve around pinball, check out this pic of Bob Dylan playing the flippers.

It's all about context, if you compare it to Rape Squad (aka Act of Vengeance) where the women being objectified and seen as militant feminists, fight back they're met with disdain, but in this era where dudes can just feel up chicks and as long as they giggle it's total cool--no lawsuits! I know I'm kind of zapping the fun outta this one but it's interesting to see a bad teen sex comedy in this perspective. I like how there's an old timey trench coat flasher who's in almost every scene lurking in the background.

I'll solve that flasher case, right after I polish off this case of Ontario swill

People's lives just revolved around pinball back then and there's even a beauty contest at the arcade ( not a Ms Pacman or Q-Bert machine in sight sadly)! There's a frightening talking clown game named "Arthur" that talks and even reacts when a bikini babe sits on it, I'm fascinated by this weird oddity but it's never explained.

Oddly enough this uber horny machine doesn't make an appearance in tonight's feature

The most surreal part of is the end pinball battle on the featured movie game (which has the cast or characters featured on the machine)! This is like Spaceballs when they're able to see the movie before it's finished. If you're a completist for UP ALL NIGHT style shit and why wouldn't you be, then definitely give this a whirl, it's fun in a totally lecherous creepy way.

WATCH ON YOUTUBE BEFORE IT'S GONE

I hate this Nova Scotia remake of Dawn of the Dead

Satans Sadists

Satan's Sadists (Nightmare Bloodbath) Directed By Al Adamson, starring Bud Cardos (1969).

This was the first Al Adamson flick I'd ever seen period! I've been trying to revisit his work recently and Fandor has fed my addiction. He's just brings that irresistible goofy level of schlock and menace that works well together and everything looks like a hideous Castle Berry Pit beef BBQ drive-in sandwich ad.

Almost makes you wanna puke your guts out

2 mins in, we're treated to an acid soaked gang rape by some of the wackiest looking bikers led by Russ "chocki / David Cross' current father in law" Tamblyn. The bikers all look like they're at a cosplay rally (Mrs. Adamson aka Regina Carol looks like a sweaty, run thru the wringer version of Nancy Sinatra). There's Acid (Greydon Clark, who also wrote the script, he's shitty genius film maker in his own right), here he looks like a fake Lee Hazlewood. It's kind of interesting that a fake singing duo like Hazlewood and Sinatra are in the same movie, they should've put on a trashy Reno tribute act to fund some of the budget! The theme song is a schmaltzy ballad that's "I'll Never Fall in Love" by Tom Jones stolen and reworked with lyrics about killing for Satan! If you're not sold by now that you must immediately track down this flick, there's no hope for you in my mind!

I threw my rancid panties at Tom Jones but he tossed them back!

Acid (or the "Some Velvet Morning" singer clone) reads up on pot while the other hippy dippy creeps gyrate to the sounds of ear torture. Wait a minute-- we've got a second rate celeb in our midst, Lawrence Tierney's brother is present, you might remember him as the cop from Gremlins. They pick up a giant eared drifter who was a former marine played by Adamson regular Gary Kent.

A female waitress/geology student rides around in a sweet dune buggy, in fact it looks almost exactly like the cartoon Speed Buggy!

Hey Speed Buggy make sure you bring us back that money so we can smoke more angel dust

Kent, Tierney and his wife all end up at the roadside stop where she works, don't look now but I smell a biker takeover coming up soon! Obviously they show up with their fugly crew, one character played by Bud Cardos, has a weird Mohawk and the skin complexion of a hotdog! Tamblin wears a big oversized lady hat and granny glasses, he looks almost like a midget or Paul Williams with a colander over his head. His hat is totally over his eyes, I'd imagine him bumping into walls.

The camera does a bunch of Laugh In zoom ins and outs as the dudes stick their tongues out--VERY REBELLIOUS! 

Can I use your bathroom, I ate too many roadside Gorditas.

Eventually they get rapey with these poor girls minding their own business and they all wear Swastikas but seem more like Scooby Doo villains than white supremacists. Back then Bikers just all flirted with fascism it was trendy! The labels on their sad sack jackets look like they're about to peel off. Why do they want to give everyone acid, I guess that's what bikers do?

I'm Van Morrison and Paul William's unwanted love child

Kent doles out the pain on the white trash, starting off with a swirly and cracks open one dude's face. It looks like they poured ketchup on his head that streamed down symmetrically.

It's difficult to make a biker flick interesting and this one runs on fumes, it's very derivative, it's only strong point is the Sadists all look really stupid. No one has any personality and there's no real message (even when Tamblyn goes into a speech about the generation gap it seems false and phoned in). At an hour and change, It's not even that long but it feels like four hours! 

I'm listening to Dino Desi and Billy on this groovy ipod  

We've covered a few bikers films on the site like thee mother of all inept genius road hog flicks The Northville Cemetery Massacre, the tepid Peace Killers is still on the agenda, but this one is too watered down for its own good. They spend at least 40 minutes wandering around the desert, man I'm getting sleepy! Greydon Clark, the guy who plays Acid directed Joysticks, The Bad Bunch and The Uninvited (1988) one of the best killer cat movies practically of all time! One of the most fascinating aspects of the film is that it was shot at the Spahn Ranch while the Manson Family prowled the area, they even watched the production. Tamblyn was also in The Female Bunch, another Manson-sploitaton flick shot there, they were pretty lucky to make it out alive if you ask me.

I thought She Devils on Wheels was dull but this one makes it look like a non stop cavalcade of perversion! I'd rather listen to the worst Standells record than suffer through this one and if you don't get that reference... flake off!

ALL CARICATURES AND NO SUBSTANCE, NEEDS ANGELO ROSSITTO TO BRIGHTEN IT UP!

AVAILABLE ON FANDOR!

The Guernica Tree (1975)

The Guernica Tree. Directed By Fernando Arrabal, Starring Mariangela Melato (1975).

Fernando Arrabal is one of the most insane surrealistic filmmakers out there, he almost upstages Jodorowsky! He really pushes the sacrilegious aspect over the cliff and is one of my new favorite directors. I recommend watching his earlier film "I Will Walk Like A Crazy Horse" first though. 

Maybe I missed an issue of Deep Red that celebrated his career (I'm not sure why he wasn't included), but at any rate he belongs among other controversial figures like Dali, Nagisa Oshima, Pasolini and Dusan Makavejev. Arrabal, along with Roland "Marquis" Topor and Jodorowsky were in a hostile performance art group called The Panic Movement together.
  

In the Guernica Tree we're in the midst of anarchy and rebirth as people of villa Ramiro (a fictional Basque village) have lost their shit in the streets. My only reference before watching this mind blowing, sacrilegious histori-spoitation movie was the Picasso painting "Guernica". The Picasso picture like this piece of artwork was a reaction to Franco Nationalists and Nazis bombing women and children, striking at the core of human civility. If you're Catholic, avoid this film like the plague, it's very confrontational and sickening. It doesn't really count as a Nazisploitation even though there are Third Reich style shenanigans.

some newspaper elmers glue ghost picture you've seen in Italian exploiation films

         
Arrabal at times is like a pornographic Luis Bunel, showing dwarfs having sex or cuming on religious statues all in the name of equality? Ok, sure I'll buy that for a dollar. When you break it all down, it just doesn't gel as much as you organically experience the rampant debauchery and weirdness that unfolds like a rancid intestinal track! That's surrealism for you, it can't really be captured on paper. I swear, one of the naked dwarfs looks suspiciously like Louis Ecclesia, or Shorty from 2019: After The Fall Of New York. The half sized bearded actor Hachemi Marzouk who plays Marvel in Crazy Horse also makes an appearance (and isn't even credited on stupid IMDB).

these new Japanese toilets are sweet!

The metaphors about the Spanish Civil War are all so repulsively in your face, if you hadn't guessed this movie is very confrontational, but also hilarious. Cult Epics put out this disc, they are braver than Criterion who plan to release Guillermo Del Toro's own Spanish Civil War masterpiece.

One disgusting scene shows Goya, a perverted criminal played by Ron Faber shooting his sperm into a glass of Count Cerralbo a fascist aristocrat's wine to express his animosity. Perhaps he's just expressing his affection and just doesn't know it yet. They show a painting Goya (Faber) created of Jesus getting blown on the cross crucified next to Frankenstein! Serious go watch this movie, I didn't believe it myself (maybe I was too wasted)! The actor who plays this anarchist maniac or hero of this film is impossible to identify with. Faber appeared in a brief scene for The Exorcist a few years before and provided one of the demon voices.

This reminds me of a Dead Kennedys album, hmm. . . Plastic Surgery Disasters, right that's it!

The Catholic Franco fascists fight against the pitchfork carrying peasants/populists who're Republican (hard to fathom aye,well unless you count the ultra-retarded Tea baggers). The ugliness against Judeo Christian idolatry is even more repugnant than Ken Russell's film The Devils. I mean people literally piss on Christ statues and dwarfs smear semen on the lips of The Virgin Mary statue, while real children clap, it's total madness. I was kind of shocked at its offensiveness and wonder why the Ken Russell film in still not properly released! 

One burnt weenie sandwich flamed broiled coming up!

The fascist Franco regime wants to keep Spain pure and they show real corpses and people bound to firing squad posts while Nazi soldiers melt captives dicks off using a torch. This movie is beyond unsettling and obviously very political. GUTS readers will appreciate its demented style even if you're confused by the historical elements.  

Yellow Dolphin Man, how long has it been, we need to hang out more 

It's important to see however because it could easily happen again, think about it, a crumbling Republic combined with a narcissistic demagogue rising to power, historical moves like a snake eating its own tale even faster than before with every receiving up to the second info.

is it scrumdiddly-umptious?

Led by Vandale (played by the attractive Lina Wertmuller regular Mariangela Melato), the poor citizens organize and fight back. Goya the Perv (Faber) who's in lust with Vandale, assists in making the people think they're safe, but who in their right mind would trust that creep? She ends up in a bamboo cage and the overly decorated General's slaughter the people and take back control. The poor once again take the brunt, while fascists dominate and get really creative with the frequent death toll, carrying it to an inquisitional level of theatrical cruelty (one midget is strapped to a fake bull as a matador rams colorful spears into his flesh). I discovered this filmmaker through Fandor, I've mentioned them a lot over the years and they consistently deliver the most vital movies out there, for a week I saw everything by Arrabal thanks to them. Check this one out, if you want to see your friend's jaws fall to the floor and whatever you do don't warn them--make it a total ambush experience. Just tell them Oh yeah there's this director who had Spike Lee in one of his movies.

WATCH ON FANDOR

Roots Of Evil

Roots of Evil (The Breeding Of Evil) Directed by and starring Christian Anders (1979).

Skunkape is Deep Roy's #1 fan. He's got the commemorative plates, the racing snail action figure and all so of course when he presented this action-packed flick I knew I was in for a treat. He teases me about having an undying infatuation with Edmund Purdom and now it's my turn to jab him in the breadbasket. 

Now for a second forget about that Indian midget and focus on the Farrah-coiffed chinless martial art stylinz of Christian Anders! He does it all, fights, sings the "balls in a vice" high pitched theme song "it's a Deaaad Ennndd" and acts the shit outta this movie! It's a catchy tune, he also provided the theme for Divine Emanuelle (aka Love Camp) "Love, Love, Love" which sounds like a warped Coke jingle, not too shabby. Just think of him as a nice guy version of Martin Kove's Karate Kid villain, instead of "sweeping the leg" he might sweep the kitchen up.

3 mins in, a group of clownish thugs get schooled (well one of them gets his limp wrist broken). The others suit up and stay awhile just in time for Anders to bust out his tender acting chops and go into a sad story about his sensei's tragic death. 

so high pitched only a dog's ears can hear it

Next, Van Bullock's (Deep Roy) imposing henchmen  Komo (Fernando Bilbao) shows up, he's got a Fu-Manchu long sideburns combo. I feel bad for Komo, who takes some serious abuse from his humiliating boss, he even has to roll out a tiny carpet for his to enter his car from. Roy's voice is very high and squeaky, he's always on the verge of strangling someone like a coked out Indian Donald Duck, he should mellow out and chillax w a nice Clamato or a jazz cigarette! 

I have to take a SHITTT!

The camera angles and goofy sound effects don't do him any favors and play up to the fact that he's a tiny gangster--ok we get it! This insecure twerp is just so put off that Frank Mertens owns a Karate school and he sends his goons over to start shit up! What's his problem anyway, he's got a total Napoleon complex!

The fight choreography is pretty good, Anders (who actually taught in reality) makes yowling noises like an Austrian Bruce Lee. There were tons of Bruce-Sploitations out there, the best poster to that signifies that era to me is Bruce Lee Fights Back From The Grave.

I crushed my balls for nuthin for this Christine audition!

  

Deep's always got a ridiculously tacky 70's outfit on, a drink in hand and never seems to leave his apartment. The same spooky winds and tension you'd see in a Fulci movie show up at the burial ground of Anders karate master. A bunch of Van Bullock's thugs again start a fight and even though they're all armed with Eastern weapons (nunchucks, one dude carries a tiny switchblade) they all get fucked up.

J.C. Pennys catalog circa 74

The film gets pretty repetitive and seems at first geared towards the PG market but stick around because it gets pretty sleazy and ultra violent. Why it's called Roots of Evil is anyone's guess!

The next time you watch The Never Ending Story, just imagine what the audio on the set would sound like with Deep Roy's actual voice yelling angrily at his racing snail!


ROE contains one of the most revolting one man training montages I've ever seen, as Frank Mertens rolls his stomach in leather fetish underpants and does a cock push-up! (I could see Mac from It's Always Sunny using this part as masturbatory material.)

these leather pants really pack in the limburger smegma stink

The pint sized drug lord is always surrounded by phones, his latest devious plan to bring down Frank is to send over Cora a flat faced temptress played by Dunja Rajter. I like how his blonde girlfriend is immediately jealous of her (talk about insecure)! Maybe she's been pining for him for awhile and he's too narcissistic to notice. The blonde is played by Maribel Martin, an actress who's appeared in highly regarded trash like The Blood Spattered Bride and The House That Screamed, she's pretty much wasted here.

this spaghetti shawl really chafes!

Serves Merten right because she plants some booger sugar on him and ditches his ass. Cora is so enamored by Frank that she shoots up and fantasizes about him. As the film chugs along it gets increasingly weirder and more sadistic, my fav part is when this terrible lounge singer who sings like a low pitched Miss Piggy and wears a shawl that looks like spaghetti. The grand finale is a must see event as poor Komo is literally snapped in half and Deep is tossed in a very cold looking brook!
It's very difficult to find this movie, but if you want to see Tim Burton's favorite little guy in action playing a warped drug lord you can't go wrong.

I SAY, I SAY, MORE ACTION THAN ANY FOGHORN LEGHORN NONSEQUITUR YOU CARE TO DREDGE UP! 

SUITABLE FOR FRAMING

ROY Goes DEEP!



WANT TO SEE MORE?
TOG presents The Trailers That Smell
Roots Of Evil

Blood Orgy Of The She-Devils

Blood Orgy Of The She-Devils (Female Plasma Suckers). Directed By T.V. Mikels, starring a bunch of nobodies (1973).

It begins with music that sounds like a Halloween sound FX record crossbred with intercepting Pac man chomps as two sleepy non-hypnotic eyes attempt to put us in a trance or maybe into a coma who knows? If you see Carl Zittrer, punch him in the throat for me! Then toe deep into this pool of garbage juice and sinew, an overly hammy actress who looks like the pretty version of Snow White's hag/wicked queen delivers her amateur off Broadway diatribe. Lila Zaborin, who plays the head she-devil Mara continues on and on throughout the film (she never worked again with obvious reason). 

YOU'RE GETTING A HANKERING FOR SOME DEL TACO, IGNORE YOUR BOWELS

I want to shut it off, but I've committed myself to reviewing this one after seeing it long ago on VHS and it lulling me into an ancient sleep that only an Iced Chai with espresso can revive me from. If you've read the Headpress expose about all the intricate details of Roger Watkins doe foot job/ Manson slaughter fest aka LHODES, then you know that he was on the set of this film because it was his first job out of college, he describes Mikels as an "absolute asshole" with shitty dumb people with no talent and that it was disturbing to him. 

Rocky Horror rape torture extravaganza! 

Bill Bagdad, a long nosed bearded character actor who resembles Michael Landon's sidekick Victor French if he fell off a tree and hit every branch on the way down. He's the main psychic's henchman. It cracks me up because he was also the Sheik from Head (1968) who says "Psst" and is subtitled. The same people from Girl In Gold Boots who I think of as fake Regis Philbin (Tom Pace) and busty Angelina Jolie (Leslie McRae) courtesy of MST3K, show up at a picnic. They materialize at the stormy house of the wicked witches' clubhouse. Mara screams and wails like she's trying to pass a shit brick! She does a monologue of babbling not making one bit of sense and uses magic to croak some dude. I feel like this homeless lady somehow convinced Mikels to write a shitty movie around her monotonous lunacy and he wasn't busy that weekend. 

OK, so here we are several hours later, whom ever wants to get into the cinematic brilliance of T.V. Mikels should avoid this shit all together. I gotta mention though when a Brylcreemer hit man shows up and blows entry wounds into all the horrid cast I almost stood up and applauded like Paul Mooney during Hattie "Mammy" McDaniel's Gone with the Wind speech!

Wait don't go I have so much more dialogue left!

Shit--they don't die, it turns out they're all reincarnated witches or something (I don't think even the filmmaker knows). Maybe if I take a 30 min nap something will actually happen. Regis and Angelina comeback and blab about white magic verse black magic. So far I don't blame my old self for falling asleep, even with all the caffeine on the planet, my brain can't get into this dull as boring shit! Instead of barf bags, they should've handed out smelling salts! 

WATCH THAT EPISODE OF WHAT'S HAPPENING WHERE THEY BOOTLEG A DOOBIE BROS CONCERT INSTEAD! 

nobody would bootleg this bullshit!