" 'Gator Bait" (1974) d/ Ferd and Beverly Sebastian

Few redheads ever reached the volcanic heights of cinematic sensuality the way the late Claudia Jennings did in her brief but memorable run in drive-in fare of the early seventies, just four years removed from achieving  Playboy's Playmate of the Year at the outset of the decade here. For those unfamiliar with the tragic starlet, tonight's focus is as an adequate place to begin as any, a standard low budget chunk of swampy seventies sexploitation that's nearly as short on acting ( Not since Vic Morrow in Castellari's Great White has a main character gone in and out of accent as much as Jennings does here.) as it is long on boat chases ...and nipple slips during said boat chases.


Wardrobe malfunctions happen to the best of 'em, even coon-ass bitches like Desiree (Claudia Jennings).
Desiree (Jennings) is interrupted while poaching snakes and 'gators by the sheriff's oversexed son Billy Boy (Clyde Ventura) and his buddy Ben Bracken (Ben Sebastian), and is graciously offered a sex or jail option from the relentless young poonhounds after a lengthy boat chase, to which she chooses option c: chucking a bag of poisonous snakes into their boat, causing the young lawman to not only shoot his father's boat full of bullet holes, but his partner-in-crime's face piece also gets a good aerating in the melee. Naturally, he blames the sunk boat and dead buddy on the wild scarlet-haired bayou minx, who once castrated one of the other Bracken boys when he came on too strong(!). The two lawmen boat over to lay the bad news on Pa Bracken, who's been bullwhipping six shades of shit out of one of his other sons for trying to fuck his own sister moments earlier(!!).


"Rape?!!? Aw hell, I was just gonna ask ya to accompany me to the soda jerk to share a malted milk!"
An angry swampbilly posse motors out to the farthest reaches of the swamps where Desiree's shack lays, and her mute younger brother and sister are quickly set upon by the vengeful hicks and it only gets worse from there, when a sexually frustrated Castrati Bracken gives the girl a twenty gauge blast up the panty purse. 'Dere gon' be some re-vange fo dis, ah guaaar-on-tee.
The murderous rednecks vainly attempt to torch the Thibodeaux shack, but Desiree returns in time to discover her sister's lifeless body, leading the cajun swamp-ginger to exact bloody vengeance on all parties involved. If that wasn't bad enough, her plan of attack revolves around boat chases. Lots of boat chases. Seriously. Even Andrea Bocelli could see how this is all gonna wrap up, ten minutes into the movie.


"You're wrong, Lowell, Berluti was left at the snapping turtle..."
Despite her erratic performance, Claudia still possesses enough beauty and screen presence to keep the viewer watching right up until the final reel, and though she doesn't appear fully nude here, there are the aforementioned bevvy of nipple slips to help the actress further stand out against the backdrop of horny hayseeds. On the other hand,  Janit Baldwin you may recall from Ruby (1976) or Humongous (1982). In fact, most of the supporting cast and crew are either named Baldwin or Sebastian. Wait a second, did I just watch a documentary? Either way, there's just enough CJ going on in this one to keep me from crawling into the back seat with my drive-in demigoddess and steaming up the windows, late eighties style. Deuce.


How'd you like to make an Indio girl, Claudia? Sorry. Lenzi moment there.

"The Legend of Boggy Creek"(1972)d/Charles B. Pierce

We'll lumber into the month of April with a drive-in classic right out of the shadowy bottomlands of seventies' Texarkana folklore, as realized by local ad salesman and film set decorator Charles B. Pierce largely on a hundred thousand dollar donation by one of his clients, only to return some twenty-five million dollars at the box-office to date, standing as one of the most successful films of 1972.With the aforementioned budget limitations, Pierce cast his movie with many locals, using a gaggle of high schoolers as a makeshift film crew and approaching would-be actors with his plans while haunting a gas station(!) while producing, directing, filming, and even crooning the title track himself, resulting in a shabby-yet-authentic feel to his cryptozoological mockumentary, which would later inspire genre hit The Blair Witch Project(1999).The memorable artwork for the one sheet, as seen above, was supplied by none other than Ralph McQuarrie, who also designed the original Star Wars trilogy.The titular "Fouke Monster" has been reportedly seen by the southern Arkansas community as far back as the fifties, described as a hulking reddish-brown hominid of abhorrent fragrance, lonely cry, and giant three-toed footprints that it's been known to leave in the surrounding beanfields, and upon the eyewitness testimony of these townsfolk Pierce drew his own inspiration.Despite some amateur camerawork, acting performances, and a creature that looks at a glance to be a combination of a Howard Stern wig and a cheap gorilla costume, this one is probably the most terrifying G rated movie ever made this side of The Apple Dumpling Gang(1975), Escape to Witch Mountain(1975), or Benji the Hunted(1987).

"ZOMG! The hen just layed like, FOUR EGGS.."
After endless fuzzy eco-shots of wetlands and wilderness are interrupted by the Fouke monster's trademark 'lonely cry'(more resembles somebody taking a blowtorch to a baboon's egg purse, but that's just me), we see the narrator(Vern Stierman) as a young boy(Chuck Pierce, Jr) excitedly hurrying through countless fields to get to a country store, where he tells the local rocking chair set about a wild man terrorizing his family's home nearby, resulting in the coots laughingly promising to fix the wagon of any hairy varmints at a later date and sending him off.On-screen testimonial and lo-fi re-enactments of encounters with the creature from residents with expositive narration about Fouke's swampy and desolate locale follows; the prodigious Crabtree family apportions much of this screen time to their avail: Smokey's got a colossal hat, while teen trapper/fisher extraordinaire, Travis, is later immortalized in a frothy country ballad that'd break Boxcar Willie out in hives.To further serve the deceased Equus ferus caballus the taste of the lash, Buddy Crabtree's playing James Crabtree, and Jeff Crabtree is in the role of Fred Crabtree, both of whom flounder into the creature's path packing redneck heat with similarly anti-climactic results."He always travels the creeks...", notes the narrator, matter-of-factly.He also likes to peep tom around Mary Beth Searcy's pad, with a hot lead-tittie hereby administered by swamp-savvy Travis directly afterwards; a moment of silence for the kitteh, expiring from fright during the night.Wounded, the beast still manages to punk out the finest hunting dogs that Texas and Arkansas had to offer, respectively, in a hunt that goes as well as DAC on Showtime at the Apollo.Then the real terror begins in the form of a wildlife montage accompanied by a bromidic ballad as cackled by the film's director.C'mon everybody, sing along at home:This is how the story plaaaaays, a world on which we seldom gaaaaze, apagefromthebookofyesterdaaaaays...

She was astounded to find 1962 on the back porch, looking for it's 'secretary look' back...
Hey Travis Crabtree, wait a minute for meee.Let's go back in the bottoms, back where the fish are bitin', where all the world's inviiiiiitin'...Herb Jones, on the other hand, enjoys the secluded penetralia of his shack out in the bottoms, visited occasionally by those Crabtree boys what furnish him tobacco and sugar and whatnot.Though the penurious old codger who once blew part of his foot away in a boating(?) accident makes for intriguing filler, his segment is creature-free.Some footprint investigation and speculation thereafter segues us into Bessie Smith's encounter with the unkempt brute, who then procedes to intrude on three isolated girls' pajama party as a gent named Walraven reports on his hide-ripped hound from a nearby mobile home."The creeks...he always travels the creeks.", adds the narrator.Next, Charles Turner and Don Ford, two locally employed cattlehands, move their wives and small children into a small house together to conserve money, only to have the infernal wretch harrass their lonely wives, until they're forced to flee to the landlord, who's gotta be distantly related to Tarantino somehow, I'm telling ya.The next day Bobby Ford and young Corky Hill find strange three-toed footprints in the mud while fishing Boggy Creek for a minute, and that very night, the Fouke monster is fixin' to return; to shamble around their property, sticking a hairy mitt through the bathroom window while Bobby's dumping for knowledge.The men of the house fire several rounds at the cryptid, which a constable later dismisses as a panther that's been living underneath the house, from the porch.After much fart-assing about with flashlights in the dark, the creature man-in-a-suit-handles Bobby, causing the traumatized hillbilly to crash through the front door while it's closed, in a state of stupefaction.Bobby recovers rapidly, and the Fords and Turners?Well, they mosey outta town with no future plans of ever returning, believe you me, Buster.Finally, we see the adult narrator revisiting the empty house, pondering the existence of such things and mysterious sounds in the night.Another monster howl cues a longer, more embarrassing reprise of the embarrassing main theme over a title montage...

Hey, what's (insert-your-mother's-name-here)'s swampy bottom doing out here in the swampy bottoms?
This one goes out, hands down, to Chesna, a cat I met through Doc that helped keep me reviewing flicks after my zine stint through his Bigfoot website; probably the only guy on this plane of existence that can pretty much recite tonight's review, verbatim.He'll even sing both tunes for you, as I learned one summer night while zooted sac around a fire at his place.Once we get the upcoming YouTube channel off the ground, you can expect to see and hear some of just what the hell I'm talkin' about, oh my cohorts.My earliest memories of this one stem from late night network television broadcasts as a young jar o'sauce, making light of the monkey suit with my kindred movie spirits and laughing at Bobby Ford busting through the door in a state of shock.What can I say, we were an odd conglomerate, me and my lads.I can throw this one(I dove at the Hen's Tooth bare bones dvd on sight, years ago) in every once in a while, and it takes me right back to those glorious days where anything seemed possible. Though Boggy Creek, from a technical standpoint, would merit somewhere between one and two Wops, I'm forced to give it the entertainment value score instead, which is three Big ones, all the way.A cult classic in every sense of the term.

" 'Try Texarkana, Louie,' you said.'There's bound to be bananas down there,' you said."

"Satan's Children"(1974)d/Joe Wiezycki

May the Ancient Ones joyously rend the bastards over at Something Weird Video limb from limb for uncovering such a strange and wonderous lost regional drive in piece of seventies shit as tonight's entry, kiddies.I love you SW guys, seriously.Don't let the $38.50 budget fool you, this is one twisted flick, indeed.For a movie that's brave enough to bring to light Satan's(or the filmmakers?) inherent hatred of queers, there sure seems to be a lot of repressed underpantsin' going on here.Shot on a shoestring in Gibsonton,Florida(don't most of the country's sideshow people own a big trailer park down there?and didn't Lobster Boy get popped in that same trailer court in the nineties?) by Wiezycki, a Tampa television director with a burning desire to make real movies.I haven't had a chance to catch his one earlier film,a blaxploitation flick, so I can't say whether or not he ever succeeded in doing so.I'm laying my money on "Fuck,no."...at least until his movie landed under the woproscope here at the Wop!Lead actor(?) Stephen White looks like what you might get if you smashed Gary Oldman and Danny Bonaduce together and then sprinkled the result with homo powder and put it in tighty whiteys for three days worth of shooting.If you think his sexual orientation is foggy, wait 'til you see the local gay-hating Satanists.The whole thing feels like it's a frame away from turning into some skeevy seventies gay porn, which it thankfully never does, still managing to maintain a creepy enough "groovy communal atmosphere" to keep viewers interested until the ghetto-assed final credits roll.

You'll be lucky to get a pinky's worth with a head like that, sister.
After some credits roll over a bogus-assed drawing of the dark lord and master the film's producers must've snagged off my fifth grade art teacher,we're introduced to effeminate teen, Bobby Douglas(Stephen White), who has it real rough, man.He's got like, yardwork and chores to complete before he can groove in his room to tunes under the influence of some shwaggity dirt weed.It doesn't help that his ballbusting fuckfaced sister Janis(Joyce Molloy...who am I kidding,none of these names were ever uttered again in film)takes potshots at his manhood and waves her panty purse in his face every chance she gets.After some dinner table foot-crotchin' backfires, she sings to pop about Bobby's funny bag of tobacco he's got stashed, forcing him to blow the clambake or forfeit his nugs to dad.He wisely splits the scene, but not before telling his father to "Go to Jesus H. Christ Hell!", a place most foul, indeed.At a local bar, Bobby barely avoids the lecherous advances of a lonely old queer, only to end up naked and hog tied in the back seat of a car full of homo hillbillies who gang rape him and leave him for dead on the side of the road.Luckily for him, his punched out carcass is discovered the next day by some nearby Satanists awkwardly huddled together and playing Keep Away with a volleyball.Yeah, that's what I said.Interim cult head,Sherry takes a shine to the abused boy amidst dissent from her fellow lispy Satanists who claim that the Devil has no time for queers and losers.Sherry also strings up a female cultist in her drawers for having lesbian desires.Okay, so these guys are Straight-anists.

Now that's what these creeps call a Saturday night mobile ass party.Deliverance on wheels.
By the time Simon, the actual moustachioed leader returns to the compound(from cleaning out Sears of its backstock of the fall men's line for 1973, seemingly), some of his people have been hanged for treason(praying for Simon's return to what looks like a State Fair stuffed animal version of Baphomet,sewn together by dirty kids in a Singapore sweatshop, hanging on a wall), forcing him to have Sherry buried up to her head outside and covered with honey so that the ants will feast on her flesh.Eventually.You've got enough time to run to the concession stand for that Nardone's pizza and fries you've been crying about since the intermission, relax.Bobby escapes the enclosure in his tighty whiteys and flees the devil worshippers into the swamp.One cultist fries himself on an electrified fence(off-camera,you kiddin' me?)and two other of Simon's thugs drown in a dug out pool of about one hundred fifty dollars worth of oatmeal.I mean, quicksand, of course.He makes it back to the homestead to brain his old man with a bottle, score with his own sister, tying her up and throwing her in the trunk of a car, while he drives back to the scene of his earlier rape, serving up buckshot justice to the over-zealous fruits and sawing their heads off(off-camera,c'mon!).He saunters back to the Satanists with a sack full of severed heads to show Simon, who no longer doubts the boy's sexuality or nature.The cultists nail Janis to a cross and hoist her into the air, while performing groovy rituals all around her.Bobby takes the horse-mouthed Sherry to bed for some more awkward-looking, forced kisses. Hail Satan!

Drain the stage blood from the animal-shaped papier mache bags for the ritual!
Kudos to SWV for unearthing such a weird,little flick, released on a special edition double feature dvd with site fave William Girdler's first effort,"Asylum of Satan", which we'll no doubt be looking at in the future here.Though Children is certainly not good by anyone's standards, I think it's undeserving of the negative tags for the film's supposed anti-gay slant I've seen a lot of knee jerk 'netters pin on it thus far.So yeah,Gibsonton,you're not only the winter getaway for sideshow performers, you're also the birthplace of tonight's movie.You might wanna work on some new tourism draws one of these days, as much as I'd love to check you out sometime.I may not be one of your Ectrodactyly-afflicted, pincer-having rascals, but they say great physical beauty can be a flaw, as well, you know.One wop.

Weep not,my children.She was crucified by a hatchet face long before they hammered her up.

"Best Friends"(1975)d/Noel Nosseck

Here sits longtime TV star Richard Hatch's first big screen venture,and though it stands as a moderately groovy drive-in drama,in which I'd guess the majority of outdoor theatergoers had already migrated to the backseat by the opening credits,there's strangely enough within to keep the viewer interested until the final reel,not least of which is a decent performance by ol' Cap'n Apollo-turned-Tom Zarek himself,gods damn it.Director Nosseck is responsible for a gaggle of forgettable made-for-television movies,and truth be told,he doesn't altogether suck here,either.Personally,I like my drive-in fare with more zombies,cannibals,big breasted sapphites,and a coked-out Giovanni Lombardo Radice doesn't hurt,but for a mid-week time waster,I wasn't too disappointed with it,despite the promise of rape-crazy injuns in the original one-sheet(spoiler:there is none.).I'll chalk it up as another example of your humble N's all too familiar obsession with all things seventies.

Why don't you just kiss him already,Jesse(Richard Hatch).
Jesse(Richard Hatch) and Pat(Doug Chapin,producer of 1979's When a Stranger Calls,hmmm...)have been best buddies a long time,as the staged photos(that appear to have been taken all in the same week,Photoshop would've helped) that accompany the main titles suggest.Though Jesse plans to change his womanizing ways and settle down with Kathy(Susanne Benton,who we last saw in "The Last Horror Film"(1982)),he decides to gather up Pat and his girlfriend Jo Ella(Ann Noland) at the airport with the promise of an outta sight trip across the southwest in a rented motor home to catch up and forge some new phony Kodak moments,as well.As they rack up miles,the buddies reminisce on old times,share some new yuks,and sleep with their respective women.So far,so good.When the two couples hit a strip bar chock full o' injuns,with a live band and an over-the-hill pasty-sporting hag flopping her saggy glad bags to and fro on the stage,Pat encourages an aniebriated Jo Ella to get up there and show the old floozy how it's done.After Cochise and Sitting Bull suckerpunch Jesse in a post-titties altercation,Pat sneaks out later that night and with a two-by-four,exacts paleface justice on the most stereotypical of the natives,with a huge feathered hat in a back alley.Best friends do that sort of thing for each other.

Now this is what I call "renting a motor home and driving carefree through the southwest with a couple of chicks".
At this point,Pat starts acting a little squirrelly.Maybe it's the scarrified mitt,maybe it's the long stretch of road,but he starts panicking at the prospect of losing his best pal to this...this WOMAN.He brings Jo Ella to tears with the announcement that he isn't really serious about her,maaaan.Then he takes Kathy to the store on the nifty new motorcycle he's bought,allowing Jo Ella the time to seduce ol' Jesse on a blanket in the grass,while informing Kathy that his buddy could NEVER settle down with ANYBODY,being a flesh-hound from way back.Even after Kathy discovers Jesse's tryst with Pat's girlfriend,she forgives him,leading Pat to more extreme tactics;trying to get her bitten by a rattlesnake among the rocks,then later trying to rape her in the motor home,leading to a punch-up between the two friends on the beach,with a bloody Pat wailing desperately,"She's had her eyes on me the whole trip,maaaan!"When Jesse refuses to allow his pal to cunt-punt his own girl,Pat rides off on his motorcycle.Jesse later finds his bruised buddy putting the moves on two high school sophomore girls in a bar(!),but refuses to partake in the underage goodness,further enfuriating his friend.That night,Jesse and the two girls are awoken by the sounds of Pat's motorcycle revving outside in the darkness,and when Jesse discovers Pat has flattened the tires and destroyed the engine,he runs out into the blackness,pistol in tow,vowing to kill him.He mistakenly shoots Jo Ella in the head instead.Oops.The next morning,both friends tearfully reminisce old times on the beach,with the girl's blanket-covered corpse to bear witness.The end.

These Indians don't wanna give you a complimentary drink with your poker chips.
Nobody involved here really went on to any semblance of a big screen career,with Hatch the most notably successful of the frakkin' lot.Ann Noland didn't even work in film after the end of 1975.I've been on a sort of drive-in drama kick as of late,and you'll be seeing that for yourself in the days to come.Despite the harsh cinematic gavel-banging I'm giving this little forgotten number,you might be inclined to search it out.Give it a screening when you have absolutely nothing better to do,and you might come away with a chuckle or two.If you're into broken bottle-wielding indians,groovy road trips,buddy movies,or A cup titties,you may just enjoy it.I sort of did,which is uncharacteristic for a guy like me.

The best groovy 70's outdoor blanket-fuck scene I've seen all week.

Beffo la morte e ghigno!

Yeah,yeah,yeah.It's been a while,I know.I'm back in front of the nerdbox once again,and I've got piles of movies to examine with you,so sit back in your favorite computer chair,or on your Sybian Orgasm machine,either or,and let Uncle Wop do the driving once again,down the boulevard,dirty as it may be,of despicable and dastardly flicks of yesteryear,both your favorites and mine.Spare me the grief,pass me an AMP,and let's get right back where we started from,like Maxine Nightingale once crooned when platform shoes and bellbottoms were the talk of the discotheque.We've got a LOT of work to do over here!


Cruelly,
Wopifex

"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