"The Chooper/Blood Shack"(1971)

Ray Dennis Steckler,of "Rat Pfink a Boo Boo" and "The Incredibly Strange Creatures who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies" fame,directed this poop-a-thon under his favorite moniker Wolfgang Schmidt(filmgoers must've mistaken this snoozer as a forgotten piece of torture propaganda from the interment camps at the time)in 1971 somewhere in a remote southwestern dust bowl.If his position as one of the most inept filmmakers of all time was ever in question,one mere viewing of this boring celluloid turd will do the trick for ANYONE.I'm pretty sure Steckler had a lot of footage of his then wife,Carolyn Brandt,his two dirty kids,and a banal local rodeo lying around when he was struck with a z-grade epiphany...why not piece together a horror movie around it?Brilliant.It seems there's this 150 year old dilapidated shack in the middle of nowhere that Carolyn Brandt(showing her acting chops playing...herself) happens to have dibs on,probably one of the fringe benefits of her previous appearances in late '60s no-budget nudie flicks,apparently a lucrative piece of dusty real estate cursed by indians and lusted after by local property buyer,"Tim Foster".He never quite purveys why he wants the blood shack,he just knows he wants it and it becomes painfully obvious he'll do ANYTHING to get it before too long...Luckily for Ms. Brandt who spends the entire film talking to herself in echo-laden voice over,"Daniel" is in her employment as caretaker of the sanguinary shed,and from the looks of his wardrobe,which usually consists of a filthy pair of jeans and shirt that's three sizes too small(when he's not shirtless,which is even more terrifying),she's not paying the poor guy very much.Daniel doesn't do much save for barking at curious thrill-seekers who get too close to the shack,"The Chooper'll git ya!",and shooing the two dirty kids from playing with broken furniture outside.Before too long a skeevy looking blonde shows up,abandoning her boyfriend,ignoring Daniel's barking,and deciding to spend the night on a ratty mattress inside the blood shack after stripping down to her bra and panties,oblivious to the rash she may get from touching anything in the one room hovel.The Chooper gets her.

One of the scarier moments outside the "Blood Shack".
The Chooper,a vengeful Indian god,is dressed entirely in black,wielding a Civil War sword,and hopping out in front of his victims,giving a blood-curdling "AAAAAAHHHHHHH!" before stabbing them with the sword repeatedly,and looking like one of those novelty birds that dip their beaks into a glass of water so popular in the seventies, while removing them from their miserable lives.
Dirty Dan discovers the bodies in the morning and quickly burys them so Ms. Brandt can take the two little dirt merchants to the local rodeo,where they meet "Peanuts the Pony"(even the horse looks a little embarrassed to be seen in this picture) for a good chunk of the film's running time.In fact,she takes them TWICE.
Mercifully,around the sixty-five minute mark,Daniel is attacked by the Chooper outside the Blood Shack,as he jumps down from the roof(!) and goosesteps/limps screaming after the terrified caretaker in circles around the shack,mortally injuring him before Carolyn shows up to brain him with a shovel,revealing...it can't be...Tim Foster.He's been killing people all along to scare Brandt into selling the property to him,and he'd have succeeded if it wasn't for Stecklers two filthy meddling kids...yeah,it DOES kinda play like a bad Scooby Doo episode minus the Great Dane and the Mystery Machine.As Daniel dies in Brandt's arms he mentions that Tim isn't the Chooper,he's not 150 years old.(And we had him pegged as an illiterate,dirty piece of dust bowl trash.Boy did he make us eat our words,eh?)And that the Chooper WAS out there and he WOULD git you.B.W. note:The Chooper wasn't actually out there,and we were spared from ever enduring a sequel,thankfully.I also doubt I'd even recommend this film to my worst enemies,knowing they'd die a horribly slow and painful death via boredom from a singular viewing,but if you like the crappiest scare fare,you might actually get some laughs out of it.But don't say I didn't warn you.The Chooper WILL bore you,and Ah know it!
Zero B.W.'s

A Tribute to the World's Greatest Sinner,Timothy Agoglia Carey

‘What I want I gonna get and no dirty Yonkee from swell country is gonna take it away from me!’-Ulysses(Tim Carey),"Bayou/Poor White Trash"(1961)
Easily one of the greatest method character actors of all time,the late Timothy Agoglia(!)Carey left behind a legacy of memorable B-movie villain characterizations,a play (The Insect Trainer)about a deadly fart,and one of the most original,underrated,independent films ever made,"The World's Greatest Sinner".He spent his cinematic career scenery-chewing and upstaging co-stars at every juncture,which hurt his memorable body of work in the long run,being passed up in Coppola's "Godfather" trilogy after shooting Coppola with a gun filled with blanks that he'd pulled out unexpectedly from a lunch box during a meeting with the film's producers(one can only imagine what Carey would have brought to the screen as Luca Brasi),Tarantino's "Reservoir Dogs"(the script of said film partially DEDICATED to him,Harvey Keitel,executive producer,eventually snubbed him in the Lawrence Tierney "Joe" role,because Carey was unfamiliar with Keitel(!)),and being cut out of Coppola's "Apocalpyse Now" as a marine who petted and talked to his dogs' fleas(!!).Always an amazing,unforgettable presence on camera,Timothy was a favorite of Stanley Kubrick(The Killing,Paths of Glory),John Cassavetes(The Killing of a Chinese Bookie,Minnie and Moskowitz)and Francis Ford Coppola,discovering Frank Zappa,who scored Carey's own World's Greatest Sinner,racking up parts in "East of Eden","One Eyed Jacks","Bayou/Poor White Trash",The Monkees' "Head",and countless television appearances up until his death in 1994.

"Me, I fart loud - I can't be a hypocrite. I get these parts, but I never get to play 'em because I fart out loud. Why can't we all fart together ? Let thy arse make wind!"-Timothy Carey at a screening of "Worlds Greatest Sinner"
Tim vs. Peter Graves,in Bayou(1961):

Tim being outrageous on Art Fein's Poker Party,1989:

"Kingdom of the Spiders"(1977)d/John "Bud" Cardos

"Khhhhhhhhaaaaaaaaaan!"
I've been an arachnophile since I was a wee wop in the mid-seventies,and have owned hundreds of tarantulas over the years,from all over the world,from Brachypelma Smithi,the famous Mexican Orange Knee,to Haplopelma Lividum,the Cobalt Blue,and every species in between.Needless to say when my eyes first caught sight of the trailer for John "Bud" Cardos' "Kingdom of the Spiders",I threw obligatory tantrums until my old man finally dragged me to the theater to allow me a solid hour and a half of mygalamorphal glory.Of course,pouring thousands of harmless terrestrial tarantulas all over Bill Shatner equates to B-movie gold,and this hairy classic has always been one of my favorites,albeit a guilty one,for reasons I'll elaborate upon later.First,the tale as it unfolds...

"You're telling me that calf...was...brought down by...spider....venom?"
Rack Hanson(Shatner)is your friendly neighborhood veterinary doctor horsing around with his dead brother's wife when he gets a voice message on his vcr-sized beeper that there's trouble afoot at the Coby ranch.Coby(Woody Strode),the friendly neighborhood African American rancher,has a sick calf that was brought down by a menacing spider's eye view steady cam as it slid through the grass,culminating in a terrifying freeze frame of the poor heifer's eye.Brrrr.Rack is puzzled by the calf's sickness,so he calls upon professional help for analysis of the cow's blood,before putting the suffering milk-giver down,much to the dismay of Coby,who blames the calf's death and possible ranch quarantine on...you guessed it,racism!Only in this case,intolerance has eight legs,two chelicerae tipped with venemous fangs,and spinnerets capable of webbing an entire town up in terror.The entomologyst(Tiffany Bolling) shows up on the scene,only to be sexually harrassed by Shatner in his cowboy hat,unaware she's the specialist sent to him to investigate the sudden aggressive tendencies being displayed by the local tarantula population.Meanwhile peaceful Verde Valley(immortalized by Dorsey Burnette in the theme song)is under attack,first livestock and local pets fall victim to the creepy crawlies,then they set their eyes upon human prey,as the Shat all but ignores Bolling's diagnosis,further trying to get into her panties instead.

"Shooting my own fingers off might quell the spiders' bloodlust momentarily!"
As the dust bowl town finally comes to the realization that they may want to destroy the huge spider hills(!) that have been popping up all over town,despite the hayseed mayor's insistance on going ahead with a town festival(Jaws anyone?),the Shat and his entourage,which by now includes a port-o-potty inventor and his wife,Rack's brother's little girl,and a bed and breakfast owner,make a run for safety as Verde Valley is besieged by thousands of tarantulas who fancy webbing the fleeing,screaming townspeople into large silken cocoons.In the frantic concluding battle between man and spider,the Shat gets doused in tarantulas while searching for the fuse box in the dark,crawling up the cellar steps with spiders on his back,arms,and face,and even a few unlucky little bastards holed up in his 70's toupee,before spinning dramatically and falling directly in front of the lens to show off the fx team's latex spider bites on his cheek.Although Captain Kirk survives his arachnid attack(where it only took four or five bites to bring down a bull earlier...you can't fuck with Bill Shatner.),the party awakens in the morning to the downer realization that peaceful Verde Valley has been replaced by an uber-cheezy matte painting of the town totally engulfed in spider webs...

"Shooting my own fingers off might quell the spiders' bloodlust momentarily!"
This pre-PETA pic had to have given thousands of tarantulas an early death,by stepping on,flinging to the ground,rolling over with car tires,blasting with fire extinguishers,etc. probably single-handedly leading to the unavailability of Mexican Orange Knees in pet shops for some twenty years before the species finally made a comeback and was taken off the endangered list.All in all,a quality piece of seventies exploitation that I throw in every now and again,if only to hear Coby scream "Ho dee do!" as he drives off a cliff with a rubber spider in his face.
Three out of four B.W.s

"Island of Death"(1975)d/Nikos Mastorakis

Guess what this Greek goatherding rascal is up to here...
One of the eternal questions emblazoned in my subconscious mind,is what hallucinogenic yummies was Nikos Mastorakis on when he dreamed this film up,after walking out of "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" with exploitation and money on his mind.
There may not be another movie in history that tackles so many taboo subjects with such a nonchalant attitude.Then again,there probably isn't another motion picture quite like this one,and probably never will be again.The negative aspects of the film are what makes it such a blast to sit through,and when I say there's something to offend EVERYBODY in here,I'm not just singing "Afternoon Delight" whilst scrubbing my undercarriage in the shower,kiddies.The first time I sat down to viddy this nasty little number,I was thoroughly shocked and entertained at the same time.As a proponent for total artistic license where the cinema is concerned,I would still agree with the BBC when they put this flick on their infamous "video nasty" list in the eighties.It should be number fucking one.It's that good/bad.

No post-beastiality snuggles for Christopher(Bob Behling).
Mykonos is the setting as Christopher and Celia arrive for what the audience would rationally think is a romantic vacation for two young lovers.And it is,sort of.Only besides lovers,these two tearaways are eluding a black London inspector on the trail of a series of gruesome murders.When the detective arrives on the Greek isle,they abruptly dispatch him with a mid-air lynching-by-airplane over the lush Mediterranean Sea(!),spurring on a sumptuously grotesque series of murders in the name of God(!),including death by gallon of paint,sword,gun,flaming aerosol spray to the face after intentional smack overdose(!),and ever the crowd pleaser, death by bulldozer.Sandwiched between these murders,Mastorakis peppers his sadistic salad with incest,voyeurism,homosexuality,gerontophilia,golden showers,beastiality,sodomy,racism,a cameo for Nikos himself,and an outrageously hilarious title song that you'll be humming for days after hitting the eject button on your dvd player.I'm not going to go any further than this about it,as it most certainly falls into the "gotta see it for yourself" film category.If this all sounds too amazing to you,don't take my mere words as authority on the film,get off your ass and gather up a copy of this exploitation must-have for your own personal collection at:www.islandofdeath.com/ with all speed,then come crawling back with your tails between your collective legs and acknowledge that I was,as always,right again.So take the sword! Kill them now!

Goatherders have more fun.
Four out of four B.W.s