"Tower of Death"(1981)d/Ng See Yuen

In 1979,Golden Harvest sifted through rushes Bruce Lee had shot seven years earlier,came up with eleven minutes worth of usable stuff,shot an entirely different movie around said eleven minutes of film,utilizing two Lee imitators(Kim Tai Chung and Tong Lung) and random shots and frames of Lee from his other films(including Lee's actual funeral footage) to piece the whole,confusing mess together and called it "Game of Death".Two years later,veteran Hong Kong director Ng See Yuen(Snake in the Eagle's Shadow)decided it would be a good idea to film a SEQUEL to a movie never made starring a man who had been dead for eight years.The end result is one of the greatest pieces of exploitation ever seen in the history of cinema.

Wong Cheng Li smiles as the back of Kim Tai Chung's head makes its first appearance.
Billy Lo(Bruce Lee,but really Kim Tai Chung) visits his friend Chin Ku(Wong Cheng Li) just in time for a martial challenge by an angry white guy in black sweats.Chin dispatches the kung fu honkey,then Billy tells of a martial challenge HE'D received in a greenhouse from a Korean(Casanova Wong).Both men laugh and part ways.Bobby visits a Shaolin abbot(Roy Chiao) to discuss the problems he's been having with his younger brother Bobby(also Kim Tai Chung),who seems more interested in dirty Chinese penetration drawings than kung fu.Billy leaves his personal kung fu manual and a letter for his sibling,explaining there'll be time for girls later(!).At this point,Bobby hears of Chin Ku's untimely death,then visits Chin's daughter,who's the Asian equivalent of Karen Carpenter,badly lip-synching Chinese easy listening tunes in a bar.She gives Bobby a cigar box full of film when her dressing room is suddenly broken into by a group of machete-wielding masked assassins.The ensuing martial battle piles out into the Hong Kong streets where Lo dispatches all disguised comers and runs off.He then attends Chin's funeral,where a helicopter swoops down and steals Ku's swasti-coffin as Billy is killed with a dart as he tries to stop the casket's theft in mid-air.

"You're just talking crap!""No I'm not,I'm Lee Chien Chung."
After more footage of Bruce Lee's actual funeral,Bobby Lo visits his father to discuss revenge for his brother's death,watching footage from the film Billy had obtained of another white kung fu guy, named Lewis(Roy Horan),and his "palace of death".Bobby deducts Lewis' kung fu "doesn't look that hot" and decides to sniff around the palace for clues.

Lewis wonders,"Bobby Lo? Could he be Billy Lo's younger brother?"
At the Palace of Death,Lewis proves a gracious host,showing Bobby his Lions of Death("They love the taste of freshly killed human meat."),his specially trained Peacocks(!)of Death("Kung-fu fighters should be fierce like a lion and swift like a peacock so I study their styles.")
,and remarks about abbot Hung Kwang's fabled Tower of Death...built UNDERGROUND.Two caped intruders appear,challenging Lewis to a martial duel,losing miserably,and are fed to the Lions of Death.Bobby decides he likes Lewis and stays the night at the Palace of Death.As he is about to play hide the spring roll with a white prostitute,a lion(man in a ten dollar lion costume) crashes through the window,killing the hooker,but not before Bobby dispatches the beast with his martial skills.Elsewhere in the Palace of Death,someone assassinates Lewis by hanging him in his own bed and gutting him like a fresh carp.Bobby suspects Lewis' one handed valet who has disappeared,then makes off for the fabled Tower of Death.
Bobby finds the valet outside the Tower,the two have a martial contest where the valet reveals he's been hiding his other hand up his kung fu jacket sleeve all along.Bobby dispatches the former one handed valet with both of his own hands behind his back and enters the Tower of Death.A well-guarded fortress,the Tower serves up silver-disco jumpsuited henchmen and a Chinese strongman in a leopard print Tarzan suit.Bobby dispatches these adversaries in a martial struggle,before taking the elevator past some impressive papier mache cave walls,ultimately finding out that Chin Ku faked his own death,had Billy Lo murdered,and resides in the lowest level with his swastika-adorned pine box.Bobby dispatches Chin in a twenty-five minute martial battle then leaves.

"Huuuuuuaaaaaaaaah!""Heyyyyyyyyaaaaaaahhhhh!"
This chop socky-soaked Bruce-sploitation epic(also released as "Game of Death II,go figure...) has everything going for it.Banal dialogue badly dubbed by familiar British voice over actors,ridiculous plot,piss-poor attempts to tie the late Bruce Lee into the storyline,homicidal men in lion suits,footage of real lions eating chunks of steak off the hood of a Range Rover,terrifying peacocks...well,you get the idea.If you can get past all of that,one thing this film does offer is splendid martial arts choreography,and the fights are nothing short of spectacular.Kim Tai Chung may not look like Bruce Lee unless his back is to the camera,but he can fight.Wong Cheng Li,Li Hoi San,and Roy Horan all turn in good battles in front of the lens.It doesn't get much better(or worse) than this,and isn't that really what it's all about?
Four out of four B.W.'s

"Student Bodies"(1981)d/Mickey Rose

Let's take a moment to harken back to the golden era of the slasher flick in the early eighties.Any deformed and/or deranged homicidal maniac stalking sex-crazed teenagers on the big screen equated to box office gold.Smackdab in the middle of this glorious time to be a horror aficionado,director Mickey Rose effectively parodied the genre with his film,"Student Bodies".And "The Breather" was born,setting the stage and raising the bar for any and all future attempts at horror comedy.Bodies pulled out all the stops,exploited all the shortcomings,paid tribute to genre classics,poked fun at stereotypes and disabilities,and stands alone,in my opinion as the greatest of its kind,bar none.Yet to be released on dvd at the time of this writing,and something of a forgotten and hard-to-find classic in any format,Student Bodies is bound to have your jaw dropping and side splitting in the same instance.

"Click.""Did you hang up?""No,I just said click."
Toby Badger(Kristen Ritter) is a high school virgin with a Prince Valiant haircut at Lamab High.All around her,her classmates are dropping like flies as they lie down to have sex.The murderer is "The Breather"(Richard Brando),a wise-cracking psycho in rubber gloves and galoshes who speaks through a rubber chicken on the phone.On Jamie Lee Curtis' birthday Toby's friend Julie is killed while babysitting with paperclips jabbed into her face as her boyfriend is asphyxiated in a garbage bag.Principal Peters(Joe Talarowski)is forced to juggle school extracurriculars,the big funeral,the big parade,the big game,and the big dance,with help from Miss Mumsley,his assistant,Dr. Sigmund,the school psychiatrist,Nurse Krud,Mr. Dumpkin,the shop teacher with a fetish for horsehead bookends,Ms Van Dyke(What's in a name?Everything.)and Malvert,the impossibly double jointed school janitor who got whiplash in both directions during a car crash.Since accident,Malvert sometimes pee red.

Charles Ray(Cullen G. Chambers)arrives at school,as his seeing-eye dog pulls into a parking space.
Helped by nerdy pal Hardy,Toby pokes her nose around the murder scenes for clues as to who the Breather might be,since nearly everyone at the school is a suspect.The horny girls die at the football game(bludgeoned with a horsehead bookend),during the parade(the black prom queen candidate is killed with an eggplant,oh sweet irony!)as their boyfriends are smothered in trash bags.The school administrators receive crank phone calls from the Breather as they focus their investigation on Toby,since she's always the first one to find the corpses.They send her to the school psychiatrist,who relates his findings to the student body over the loudspeaker system,that though they have no hard evidence against Toby,she could very well be the psychotic killer they've been looking for,but no one should treat her any differently(!).

"Whore!All girls same,All girls leave Malvert!"
Halfway through the film,a spokesperson appears on the screen and explains that there is no explicit sex or violence in the movie,but since R rated movies are the most popular,the producers have asked him to say "Fuck you" to the audience.Toby and Hardy develop a plan to lure the Breather out into the open at the school dance where,in disguise with balloons down her top,she convinces Malvert to lift Principal Peters' keys from his pants.The janitor also lifts Peters' cheese,which he keeps down there to attract mice.As another candidate is killed with her own crown,Mr. Dumpkin faces off against the killer,who is armed with a saw.Dumpkin encourages the Breather to clean and oil the saw in true shop class fashion before the maniac clobbers the teacher in the head with it,removing him from the list of possible suspects,as shown by the flashing subtitles at the bottom of the screen.As Toby thumbs through files in Peters' office,the principal comes upon her,wearing only a pair of boxers and an "I Love NY" tattoo on his chest(he's been naked underneath his clothes all these years).Together with Miss Mumsley,who is his mother AND father,they reveal their guilt in the murders.Toby spirals into a nightmare dream sequence before waking up to realize it was all a dream,Wizard of Oz style.Or was it?

"What have we here,miss shouldn't-be-in-the-class-anyway?"
If you love horror movies and comedies,this truly is the best of both worlds.Rapid-fire jokes fly at every juncture,meriting several rewinds to catch them all throughout.Obviously,I've saved the best gags and bits for you to discover on your own.Some may take offense at the pot shots taken at minorities and handicapped individuals,but it's all done in the name of good fun,afterall.Once you've seen it,I guarantee you'll chuck any copies of the "Scary Movie" series you might embarrassingly own into the bin,and add it to your list of repeated viewings.Find yourself a copy,and make "Student Bodies" the finest slasher parody in your dvd player at this time.

Four out of four B.W.'s

"Witchfinder General"(1968)d/Michael Reeves

You can imagine how excited I was when MGM released "Witchfinder General" through their Midnight Movies DVD series recently.I've always been a huge fan of Vincent Price,and this film is one of my all-time favorite Price vehicles.It was re-released as "The Conqueror Worm" in the United States to cash in Roger Corman's earlier string of Edgar Allan Poe movies starring Vincent Price,but has precious little to do with the author or his work,only briefly alluding to his poem.Where Price is concerned,this one is an absolute must,and a far cry from the hammy thespian we've come to know and love.There's no shrunken head apple makers here,he's a power-mad prick(roll your tongue dramatically here)who concocts all sorts of on-screen violence in the name of the good lord that had sixties audiences aghast in the aisles.

Vincent Price as Matthew Hopkins,the titular Witchfinder General.
Matthew Hopkins and his bestial associate Stearne are opportunists in the civil war-torn 1645 English countryside,torturing villagers into confessing diabolical acts of witchery,and collecting a fortune from the local magistrates for services rendered.While her lover is away fighting for the roundheads,Sara(Hilary Dwyer),the niece of a parson who is looked upon with disdain by the villagers for his unorthodox ways,encounters Hopkins and Stearne,who gleefully arrest the parson on charges of witchcraft,jabbing needles into his back in search for the "devil's mark" before Sara offers her own body to the Witchfinder in exchange for the old man's life.After Stearne takes for himself what is given to Hopkins,the young girl loses favour in the Witchfinder's eyes,and he resumes torturing her uncle,executing the parson and two women before travelling on to the next town.

Stearne(Robert Russell)tries out his new human pin cushion.
Sara's lover Marshall returns to her town of Brandeston and hears of the lurid details of her time away from him,and Hopkins' dastardly deeds,vowing to kill the men of God.Meanwhile,Hopkins and Stearne become separated when a roundhead patrol tries to comandeer their horses for the war effort,with Hopkins leaving his partner to be captured.Marshall fights with Stearne, who escapes and reunites with his co-conspiritor and warns him of the young soldier's plans for revenge.While separated from Stearne,the Witchfinder works alone,devising new methods for purging the devil out of accused witches,burning them at the stake alive.

Anyone bring marshmallows?
In Lavenham,Hopkins and associate find Sara,who had been sent there earlier for her own protection,and set a trap for Marshall who learns that the witchhunters are in the town.The Witchfinder accuses the young couple of witchcraft and arrest them both,dragging them to a dungeon where the torture commences.Marshall is forced to watch Stearne drive needles into Sara's back,refusing to confess,and instead vowing to kill both men with his bare hands.Marshall's army troop converge on their place of confinement as the young soldier breaks free of his bonds and a fight ensues.Does love triumph over all?Does the Witchfinder live to carry out God's work another day?Buy the MGM dvd and find out the action-packed climax for yourself!
As I stated earlier,this predecessor to "Mark of the Devil"(1970)(another favorite of mine,of course) delivers on solid performances by the cast,unusual amounts of grue for the time period,and strong direction and script.The dvd offers a crisp clear print of the film,and the original trailer,and is most deserving of a place on your shelves if you fancy yourself a Vincent Price enthusiast.The master does not disappoint!

A witch gives new meaning to the term "well-hung".
Four out of four B.W.'s

"Kiss of the Tarantula"(1974)d/Chris Munger

Another late night,low budget gem in the "dweeb-gets-his-or-her-revenge" sweepstakes so popular in the 1970s,"Kiss" is an effective little yarn that plays upon people's
inborn fear of large,hairy mygalamorphs,or tarantulas,if you will,for all non-arachnophiles out there.Of course,as you might have guessed by now,your humble narrator loves the bejeezus out of all lil' bastards hairy and venemous,so I probably wasn't the target scare audience here.Still an oft-played dvd in my collection,so read on.

Our loveable little heroine busy playing with her spiders,bless her heart.
Susan Bradley(Suzanne Ling)likes spiders a lot.This doesn't seem to bother her mortician dad very much,as he's too busy dolling up corpses all day,much to the chagrin of his wife,who not only hates their daughter and her hairy eight legged pals,but also plans to off her partner to free herself for a torrid love affair with Uncle Walter(Eric Mason).When Susan hears of mom's plan to snuff dad for his own brother(blech),she intervenes by putting one of her fanged lovelies in bed with her,causing the scheming bitch to have a heart attack.Time passes,and Susan matures from a quirky little oddball into a teenaged weirdo,with a basement full of cages(?)full of Mexican Orange Knee Tarantulas(they're harmless...sssshhhhh!).When her dad finally shuffles off the mortal coil,it's Susan and her spider army vs. her meanspirited classmates,and even good ole Uncle Walter,who's stuck around all these years for a shot at the beaver pelt of his dead brother's daughter(double blech!).

Brainless high schoolers in their thirties will never understand you,Susan.
When a gaggle of schoolmates(who don't look a day over thirty) accidentally kills one of her pets in a harmless prank at the family mortuary,Susan decides enough is enough and sends her minions to do her vengeful bidding,offing them in cars at the drive-in,in claustrophobic air vents,it's a veritable tarantula a go-go over there.Uncle Walt,a detective,ignores the writing on the wall about his niece and her murderous extracurricular activities in the name of trying to score an honest piece of family pussy.He even goes so far as to strangle a potential eye-witness to keep his kin's spidery secret safe.When he relates the lengths he's gone to get a glimpse of her vertical smile,Susan's a bit creeped out.A struggle ensues,Walty tumbles down the steps,and....you'll have to score yourself a copy of this little ditty to see the outrageous ending.

Get that fingernail outta my abdomen,or I'll flick urticating hairs in your eyes,bitch.And that won't be any picnic for you.
A fantastic drive in entry that used to play on late night television all the time,I always had a soft spot in my heart for Sue.It's not often you find a dame who plays with Brachypelma Smithi in a mortuary,which is wicked hot,although she wasn't exactly Rosie Holotik lookswise,but what the hell.Viddy well,droogies,and you'll see exactly what I mean.
Two out of four B.W.'s

"Squirm"(1976)d/Jeff Lieberman

In the mid-70's eco-horror was all the rage,cautionary tales of nature rising up against ignorant humanity flickered away on drive-in,theater, and television screens everywhere,much to the dismay of ignorant humans here on terra firma.Pollution was a major concern,causing all sorts of normally friendly beasts to cinematically bare their fangs and strike out in the name of ecological preservation,and hippies everywhere were glad of it.Hell,even the normally docile American Indian shed a boob tube tear in hopes that we'd stop haphazardly flipping our Orange Julius cups out the car window on the highway.Amidst this wave of eco-conscious filmfare,came director Jeff Liebman's 1976 creepy-crawly entry,"Squirm",warning ignorant fishermen that sometimes,with help from downed power lines in electrical storms,the worm indeed turns.

"Notfahnuttin,you come near us with that bobber,you're gonna end up sleepin' wit the fishes!"
Cityslicker Mick(Don Scardino of "He Knows You're Alone" fame)heads to Fly Creek,a sleepy fishing community in Georgia that's being bombarded by the granddaddy of electrical storms,to hook up with a southern belle(Kim Basinger was turned down for the role,bet she regrets not having this little number on her resume,eh?)played by Patricia Pearcy(she's more of a gritty-looking outhouse queen than a belle,mind you).Unbeknownst to the local goobers,during the storm some power lines are felled by lightning,sending electricity into the soaked ground and enraging the populace of nightcrawlers therein to the point that they scream and bite hicks on sight.Mick becomes aware of the terrifying phenomena when he finds one of the ornery critters in his eggcream.Blech.

Local worm-farming goober scooped clean like a pumpkin by aggro earthworms.News at eleven.
Before too long these slimy little beasties are enveloping every Buford in sight,even burrowing into the face of Geri's scorned backwoods suitor(R.A. Dow)in a memorable effects sequence,pre-dating The Fog's "Wormface" by three years!Mick discovers the worms' harsh opposition to light,though not their uncanny resemblance to mountains of uncooked tomato and spinach spaghetti as they tumble over each other towards each next unsuspecting grade school dropout/victim.The race to survival is on.Does Mick get his trailer park arm candy to safety before the gelatinous,screaming piles of worms,led by Roger the worm-faced redneck,turn the duo into macabre mouthfuls of savory supper for the segmented shrieking sentinels of southern hospitality gone horribly wrong?Rent or buy the MGM dvd to find out the nerve-wracking climax yourself!

"Whur yew goin',citah boy!"
Lieberman followed this late night classic up with the equally entertaining redneck opus, "Just Before Dawn" six years later.You can't really go wrong with hideous pissed off worms,rednecks,and Don Scardino,who carved a slight B-movie career playing the "nice guy" in movies like this.Ted V. Mikels struck a fatal blow for humankind against the nasty crawlies the next year with his infamous musical,"The Worm Eaters",arguably one of the worst movies ever made.Give it a look!
Two out of four B.W.'S

"Savage Man,Savage Beast"(1975)d/Antonio Climati

I first saw this mondo documentary as the second half of a drive-in double bill with Lenzi's "Cannibal Ferox(Make Them Die Slowly)"(1980)as a teenager,and certain scenes stayed with me for years until I was able to find myself a copy.Though most of the film is what you've come to expect from other films of the same ilk and era,you'll be disturbed by the shocking images that Climati,former cinematographer for Prospero and Jacopetti on films like "Mondo Cane" and "Africa Addio",has put forth onto the big screen in his first directorial vehicle.His cinema verite' style turns horrific visions into poetry,and certainly influenced Deodato's "Cannibal Holocaust",and his lush use of slow motion is bound to take viewers' collective breath away.
"Ultime Grida Dalla Savana" focuses on the constant struggle between man and animal for survival,and every variant in between.Men hunt elk,bears fish for salmon,leopards eat monkeys,naked tribesmen fuck the bare earth,another tribe tosses their semen into a river(after collecting it in the most ridiculous codpiece ever committed to celluloid),aborigines hunt fruit bats with boomerangs,and on the opposite end of the spectrum,anti-hunting groups in England outwit hunters to free foxes,and obligatory,unwashed dirt merchant hippies hold love-fest concerts in protest of animal killing(really an excuse to drop all kinds of mind-altering drugs,fuck in the mud,and breastfeed baby goats...I shit you not.)

Insert wah-wah pedal porno guitar here...
And then,there's the aforementioned two scenes I was talking about earlier.The family of Pit Dernitz watches from his car as he gets out,home movie camera in hand,and films a pride of lions enjoying a fresh kill under a tree at a wildlife park in the Congo,all the while another family in a car next to his also captures his escapade on film.Unbeknownst to Dernitz,his family,and the party in the second car,is an adult female lion that has snuck around the car,stalking the amateur filmmaker,before pouncing on the idiotic tourist from behind.

And the 1975 Brainless Jackass Award goes to...
The hungry,pissed off lions make a meal of Dernitz in front of his hysterical family trapped in the car,and the other camera filming from the car next to them,impossibly bending his broken,eviscerated body much to the dismay of everyone watching,including the viewer.Dernitz's own camera keeps rolling as well as a gruesome final epitaph to his own stupidity,before the park rangers arrive on the scene and put the maneaters down.Though the validity of said footage has been questioned over the years,you wont soon forget a single frame of it.

"He tastes GREEEEEAAAT!"
The other incredible scene involves mercenary-types in South America hunting indigenous tribesmen down,then scalping,amputating,and finally castrating their human game,proudly displaying their macabre trophies and aping for the cameras.You'll be torn between turning away in disgust and being glued to every frame on the screen in curiosity at the bloody indifference these men show for their fellow man.The documentary ends with an amazing scene involving a man in the wild approaching a wolf and gaining its trust with an outstretched friendly hand.Hard to track down in any format currently,I urge you to set out on a quest to see this motion picture if you haven't already.A thought-provoking,sometimes beautiful,sometimes shocking testament to the world we all live in.

Three out of four B.W.'s

"Watermelon Man"(1970)d/Melvin Van Peebles

I've always loved sitting down to a good blaxploitation flick from the seventies,or a bad one,which is even better,most of the time.Ridiculous afros,eyesore pimp gear,racist cops,jive turkeys,bad martial arts choreography,bitchslaps,yo mama jokes,what's not to like,ferchrissakes?Watermelon Man,directed by Melvin Van Peebles,of "Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song," fame,may very well be the best of the bunch.Read on,mothafuckas.
Godfrey Cambridge(Cotton Comes to Harlem,Night Gallery),a black actor,plays Jeff Gerber,a middle-class white insurance salesman with a wife and two kids(one of which is a very young Erin Moran from Happy Days) who enjoys lying on his tanning bed,shadowboxing,and racing his bus to work on foot,when he isn't being a chauvenist that resists his seemingly liberal wife's amorous advances and being a bigot who throws ethnic jokes around and shrugs off the black race riots she constantly points out on television.His world is turned upside down one morning when he's forced to tell his screaming wife that the negro in the bathroom is him(!).

Before.

After.
Thinking he's inadvertently put too much soy sauce(!) in his homemade tanning lotion,at first Gerber is the same white guy in black skin.But as his milk baths and voodoo rituals("Ooga Booga Dooga Doo!I'm getting whiter and whiter!") to turn him white again are fruitless,and his liberal(?) wife now resists his advances,his bus races turn into police chases("He's running!He MUST have stolen something!"),his previously uninterested teutonic co-worker now wants some sexual chocolate(she cries rape after he breaks it off),and his neighbors crank call him and offer to buy his house in effort to keep the neighborhood white("Jeffrey Gerber?""Yes?""Move out,nigger."Click.),he starts looking at things in a different light.The insurance company relocates him to the black neighborhood,his family leaves him,and time passes.When his wife later calls him to see how he's doing,though he sounds like Jeff Gerber,the white man she married,he's now Jeff Gerber,the soul brother who's training for the revolution in a dirty basement with fellow disgruntled blacks.The transformation is complete.
Columbia pictures originally wanted a white actor like Jack Lemon or Alan Arkin to play the part in blackface,but Van Peebles demanded a black actor,in whiteface instead.The studios also wanted the "happy ending" where he wakes up to find the whole ordeal was just a nightmare,and that he ends up white again,but Van Peebles incurred their wrath and argued for the "soul ending" instead.Columbia liked the movie in the end, and signed the director to a three picture deal,which led to the making of Sweetback,the most successful independent film of 1971,and the studio subsequently tearing up his contract directly afterwards.Ain't dat juss like de man?Always brangin' a bruvah down!See it!
Three out of four B.W.'s

"The Boy Who Cried Werewolf"(1973)d/Nathan Juran

Released as one of Universal's last double bills with equally groovy horror,"Sssssss"(1973),Nathan Juran's "The Boy Who Cried Werewolf"(1973) is a lost treasure for those who cherish painful,flailing attempts at acting by a cast of forgettables,cookie-cutter 1970's made-for-tv movie horror plots(see:"Gargoyles"(1972)),embarrassingly bad makeup(an early queef from FX Wizard Tom Burman),day for night shots that rival even Viktors Ritellis' "The Corpse(Crucible of Horror)"(1970),and the feeling that the individuals responsible for this little ditty either had no idea what the hell they were doing,or just couldn't give a monkey's about the subject matter they were dealing with,which makes for a pleasant evening of '70s horror hijinks.
The late Kerwin Matthews is Robert Bridgestone,a divorced father trying to spend quality time with his son Richie in a little cabin out in the woods,just down the road from a gaggle of travelling hippie Jesus freaks,perpetually hopped up on the Bible and goofballs.Unbeknownst to Bridgestone,there's a laughable-looking lycanthrope prowling about his property,probably looking to bum a smoke from Michael Landon in his "I Was A Teenage Werewolf" get-up,as he certainly seems to have studied him briefly in preparation for this role.His son Richie gets accosted by our furry fiend one night,only to have Dad subdue the beast with a stake through the heart(?),but not before the wolfman manages to bite Robert on the arm.See where they're going with this one?

"Dad!Dad!DAAAAAAAAAD!Dad!Help me,Dad!"...Scott Sealey's only lines.
Robert is now a werewolf,and only Richie and Dr.Marderosian know better,and the sheriff is only interested in giving the hippies a hard time,in typical '70s cinematic fascist law enforcement fashion.Even when dad starts murdering the townsfolk,by strangling them a little and drawing less blood than a big wheel brushburn,nobody believes Richie for a minute.Bland dialogue between the separated parents doesn't help move this folkloric take on the Hollywood werewolf flick,and neither do the sparse,bloodless killings that seem to be happening each night,as opposed to the ritual monthly full moon murders in other pictures.Eventually,Robert commits a puppy faux pas by bringing a young girl's head in a sack home to the cabin to bury in the cellar like a macabre steak bone(!)and chases Richie through the local woods, just as the lawman is forming a posse to hunt him down like the mangy mutt that he has become.He gets riddled with bullets,spinning around like a slow-mo ballerina after too many appletinis,and dies,impaling himself on the gypsy hippie leader's cross.Richie and mom are reunited at the close of the picture,and she hugs him and tends to the bite that his father gave him in the melee...Sequel anybody?

"Just because you can lick yourself now,I'm out of the picture?"
All in all,I enjoyed seeing it after all these years,and I'd imagine it was an effective flick in luring that outta sight brunette to the back seat of your '70 Nova during the drive-in intermission,so long as you gave her the tapioca in time to return to the front seat for Strother Martin injecting Face from the A-Team with cobra serum in the second feature.Look for it!
Two out of four B.W.'s

"Shriek of the Mutilated"(1974)d/Ed Adlum

From Michael and Roberta Findlay,the directorial team responsible for "Slaughter"(which had a new ending sequence added later and re-released as "Snuff"),and the producers of the equally catchy title, "Invasion of the Blood Farmers",comes the best toilet-budgeted "cannibals-use-yeti-as-an-excuse-to-eat-collegiate-hippes" movie ever made,bar none.Dr. Prell,a professor with a bigfoot fetish,leads the live action equivalent of the Scooby Doo gang, complete with the flower- stickered Mystery Machine van, but sans the Great Dane,on the same investigative class trip that 86ed his previous students save for one,who's gone bananas and secured himself a job as the college greenskeeper(they let this cornflake around the hedge-clippers?)some seven years ago.The former top student/lone survivor/greenskeeper catches wind of Prell's plans to lead more lambs to the slaughter at a seriously groovy college popcorn party at his house,goes further into a state of crackers,slashing his wife's throat after the party guests leave,effectively killing her,except she drags her dying frame acroos the floor(and a plugged-in toaster too)to the bathtub where he sits,fully bloody clothed in the bath water,and electrocutes him in a vortex of bad 70's visual effects.
Outrageous murders never stopping a hard-driving man like Dr. Prell,he and Fred,Velma,Daphne,and their obligatory acoustic guitar strumming folkie chum, press ahead to a secluded island where Prell's associate,Dr. Warner has conveniently gathered evidence of a living yeti(in New York state,mind you).Warner shares household duties with Laughing Crow,a mute Indian servant who looks more like Al Pacino's retarded brother.The gang immediately sets out into the woods outside Warner's humble abode to look for their hominid,who upon first glance looks a lot like the sheepdog from Disney classic,"The Shaggy D.A.".Prell's yeti isn't nearly as loveable though,and it soon goes through hippie students one by one like a middle-aged barfly through tequila shots on a lonesome Monday night.

"I'm out of ordah?You're out of ordah!This whole fucking saturnalia's out of ordah!"
Outrageous murders never slowing down an adamant yeti-tracker like Prell,he uses the mangled body of one of the girls to try and trap the snowman,but in a sudden melee of plot twists,we find out that Prell,Warner,Laughing Crow,and even the island's police are in actuality modern cannibals preparing for a Saturnalia feast they hold every seven years,and that the hokey white yeti is just a suit(really?)they use for their fiendish games.Is the last remaining student inducted into their flesh-eating cult by sharing his girlfriend's meat with the partygoers?Or is he resigned to trimming shrubbery around campus,while mumbling to himself and peering up mini-skirts? The ending is left up to you. My daughter's future lemonade stands will have a bigger budget than this flick did,but between the interesting story,the laughable acting,surprisingly sparse gore for a 70's exploitation film such as this one,and the toe-tapping rhythms of one-hit wonder,Hot Butter and "Popcorn",I highly recommend this guitly classic/sleeper to anyone who can appreciate low budget gems that have a little heart behind 'em,even if it may be tied to a tree as bait for cannibals in yeti suits.See it.

From the worst blizzard in New York state history comes the...yeah,whatever the hell he's supposed to be.
Three out of four B.W.'s

"House on the Edge of the Park"(1980)d/Ruggero Deodato

David Hess plus straight razor plus party full of snooty women equals cinematic GOLD!
When Ruggero Deodato(of "Cannibal Holocaust" fame)signed on the quintessential celluloid psychopath,David Hess(Last House on the Left,Autostop Rossosangue),and paired him with Italy's favorite whipping boy,Giovanni Lombardo Radice(City of the Living Dead,Cannibal Ferox,The Church),then gave them a supporting cast that included Lorainne DeSelle and Annie Belle to play with,I'm sure he KNEW what kind of magical insanity he'd end up with.He has since downplayed this film and questioned its merit,but let uncle B.W. set the record straight:They don't get any better than this!

David Hess as Alex,a modern day Barber of Seville.
Alex(Hess) works at a Park n' Lock in Manhattan,when he's not stealing cars,or raping/strangling petite blondes from discotheques.Ricky(Lombardo Radice)is his somewhat goofy pal,who channels Tony Manero from "Saturday Night Fever"(if he was retarded).When a couple of posh socialites(Annie Belle,Christian Borromeo)having some car trouble unwittingly look to the dynamic duo for help,Alex is more concerned with boogying,Ricky gets their engine purring in no time flat.Alex,taken with the girl's ample curves and silk stockings,puts a raincheck on discodancing,and decides to attend the couple's social gathering in New Jersey,with Ricky grinning sadistically in tow.Before they embark on the party,Alex backtracks to the locker in his office.Hmmmm,straight razor.I'm probably gonna need that.
At the party,Alex and Ricky are fish out of water,surrounded by well-to-do snobs who treat them like a sideshow exhibit.Lisa(Belle)is a pricktease of the highest caliber,not the least bit impressed by Alex's banana yellow blazer and vest,while Ricky mixes liquor,striptease,and boogying for the party guests,who laugh at his expense when he collapses to the ground in his underwear,all boogied out.Ricky joins the partygoers for a fixed game of cards,where he loses every round,while Alex joins Lisa for a relaxing shower upstairs,which she bows out of prematurely,leaving Alex with blue balls and a wet afro.At this point,Alex comes downstairs to supply Ricky with more cash,and oversee their dirty poker dealings.

Johnny Morghen gets to third base with Lorainne DeSelle.
When the snobs realize their snooty games are over,Howard and Tom(Gabriele Di Giulio,Christian Borromeo)try to ratpack Alex.Big mistake.Streetfighting you don't learn watching Savalas on tv(who Hess strongly resembles,only with an afro).Alex bashes Tom's face repeatedly into a tabletop,then beats Howard out to the inground pool,before kicking him into it,then pissing in his face as he helplessly struggles to climb out.Alex says,"Ho!Ho!Ho!Ha!Ha!Ha!",as the piss-covered partier is humiliated.Now,with the male(?) partygoers subdued,Alex lights a joint and the real party begins.Alex commands Ricky to rape Gloria(DeSelle)in front of the horrified guests,which he is unable to do.He manhandles Glenda(Marie Claude Joseph) and calls her "Roots",as she is bald and black.He takes Lisa upstairs and rapes her,which she starts to enjoy(!) halfway through.He slices Tom's face open with his razor,calls him a faggot repeatedly,then ties Howard up underneath a table,leaving him to watch the rest of his hijinks helplessly.Ricky chases after Gloria who tries to run for help,then scores a piece of sympathy-pussy from her outside the house.

Cindy...Oh,Cindy...Cindy,don't let me down.
Cindy(Brigitte Petronio),a flirty,pubescent virgin,rings the doorbell,and Alex kicks into high gear.He strips her in front of the guests and throws her to the couch,where he slashes her with his trusty straightrazor,laughing maniacally.At this point,Ricky decides Alex just may have taken their fun too far(!) and tries to stop him,earning himself a hearty belly slash from Alex's implement of Hell.The snobs then turn the tide on Alex,shooting him multiple times with a pistol they had hidden in a drawer(once in the junk...ouch!)as he screams in agony,falling into the pool in slow-motion.The partygoers reveal the whole thing was a setup,and that the blonde Alex raped and strangled at the outset was Tom's sister.They take pity on the wimpering Ricky,who is bleeding out on the floor.

They say you always remember your first time...and you WILL remember Alex,won't you?
Media Blasters dvd release of this cult classic stands as the one to buy,with Deodato/Hess/Lombardo Radice interviews,trailers,poster gallery,and a beautiful print of the film.Hess and Lombardo Radice are two of my favorite actors,Deodato one of my favorite directors,and this twisted tale of rape,torture,and revenge is guaranteed to satisfy.Some critics of the film claim it goes too far,but only a discodancing idiot would fail to see the movie's many strengths,strong characterizations and message therein.So,if you're up for some party fun,served up by David Hess(so long as you can overlook his full nude scene...blech.)give La Casa Sperduto nel Parco a try.As you think to yourself, it can't get any crazier,remember:You must be cartooning,the best is yet to come!

Four out of four B.W.'S
Johnny Morghen shows them how he really dances it:

"I Drink your Blood"(1971)d/David Durston

Ahh,those wonderful early seventies.America shuddered at the threat of other Manson-esque cults lurking in the shadows,the psychedelic power of L.S.D.,and hippies' free love which chipped away at the moral fiber of our country from the inside.Director David Durston capitalized on all of these when he served up "I Drink your Blood"(originally titled "Phobia")to eager drive-in crowds in 1971,scoring an underground classic that successfully played on those fears,and remains a zany,over-the-top favorite to this day.

"Satan was an acidhead!"and from the looks of it,clothes bummed him out,too.
Freaky Hindu Bhaskar leads a troop of hallucinogen-drenched hippie burnouts whose groovy van breaks down in a small community,forcing the far out Satan-diggers to hole up in a local barn,where they drop some acid,strip out of their bell-bottoms,and brutalize/gang rape a curious female onlooker,spurring on an investigation by the girl's grandfather,who also gets roughed up and sent packing,after they dose him too,much to the dismay of his pre-teen grandson,a future conservative republican if ever there was one,who decides to take revenge by infecting the town's meatpies with rabies from a dead dog in the woods(!)then feeding the pies to the unsuspecting devil worshippers.Suddenly the outta sight bunch is frothing at the mouth,spreading the contagion amongst the innocent townsfolk,and embarking on a hallucinogenic murder spree!

Mrs. Lovett's got nothing on this little rascal.
Hands get sliced off with electric knives(remember those?for people too lazy to cut their own meat...),heads get chopped off,swords are swallowed,rats get barbequed on a spit,stabbings,hangings,Oriental Dragon Ladies douse themselves in gasoline and set themselves ablaze,and all the while dainty Lynn Lowry doesn't utter one line of dialogue!In the end,the local heros discover that the rabid antagonists,like ALL hippies really,have a loathsome fear of water,and turn the tide with a common garden hose...Or do they?

Take "yo momma" jokes too far,and this is what happens.
Before Box Office Spectaculars re-released a deluxe edition on dvd last year,the out-of-print multi-autographed original(complete with the late Cobra Dancing Paki,Bhaskar) went for upwards of three hundred samoleans on eBay.A throwback to the glory days of diabolical drive-in horror double features,this one will have you waxing nostalgic for pounding beers in a classic muscle car,while your date stocks up on Nardone's pizza at the concession stand,later to be given the extensive "back seat tour" once you're properly plastered enough.No horror collection is complete without it,so run out and grab one while the grabbing's good!

David Spade's disembodied head?You decide!
Four out of four B.W.'s