"Fangs" (1974) d/ Arthur Names

Disregard the misleading sales pitch on the groovy one-sheet of tonight's movie, as it's instead packed with less bite than a fucking earthworm. If William Grefe's drive-in rattlesnake eco-opus Stanley (1972) was a bowl of Froot Loops, then Fangs, or Snakes, as it's alternately known, would be a see-thru generic bag of Silly Circles...if it were directed by the sound man from Ted Mikels' Corpse Grinders (1971), that is. My copy of the movie is the murkiest imaginable, from the old Video Gems vhs, as any clearer quality might only make it more obvious that there isn't a poisonous snake within miles of the camera, and not even Les Tremayne's estate would be pulling for a blu-ray release of it, at any point in time. It's like this...

 
"Here, let this one wriggle around in your pants a spell.", offers Snakey (Les Tremayne).
Snakey Bender (Les Tremayne) is the local grizzled, old, snake-gathering coot who buys his beans from the general store, as run by a barrel-shaped lesbian named Sis (Alice Nunn) and her semi-retarded brother Bud, on credit. He also encourages the local fourth grade boys to supply him with mice and lizards for his snakes, which perturbs the local alcoholic preacher, Brother Joy (Marvin Kaplan), and enjoys listening to marching band records with his pal, Burt (Richard Kennedy), every Wednesday night. Wednesday nights also see a number of visits to the fourth grade teacher's place, where Cynthia (Bebe Kelly) sexually grooves on one of Snakey's scaly pets named Lucifer. Weird as it may all sound, this delicately balanced routine keeps ol' Snakey from abruptly losing his mind, and going on a vengeful snake-based kill-crazy rampage. Wouldn't you know it, the preacher convinces the teacher to disallow the boys to further deliver prey items to the old man, and the shopkeep's brother eagerly smashes Snakey's favorite pet on orders from the frumpy fish eater. To make matters worse, Burt runs off and marries a stripper named Ivy (Janet Wood), and puts an end to the duo's music appreciation during the week on her suggestion. Ol' Snakey ain't a-gonna stand for this sorta thing, no siree.


"The Video Gems vhs print of "Fangs" is too shabby, we need a blu-ray remaster!" - Nobody
As it stands, they don't call Snakey "Snakey" for no good reason, and he's soon doling out fang-injected retribution on any no good feller what wronged 'im. First Burt eats a brick bludgeoning, and is dumped off a nearby cliff in his car, and Ivy is then taken prisoner, and forced to watch as Brother Joy is offed in his underwear by Snakey's serpents, his corpse-laden car also dumped off the same cliff. In fact, the cars pile up at the bottom of said cliff, and nobody seems to notice or care in these here parts. Bud fails to pop the heads off of incoming rattlers, and he joins the others at the base of the drop off. Sis flunks the "Is it a king snake or a coral snake at the bottom of the fifty-five gallon drum she's being lowered into via makeshift trapeze (they were all coral snakes, stupid!) and her pick up truck is soon added to the junkyard under the cliff. Snakey even schedules a reptile rendezvous with the herpetology-horny Cynthia, and while she's writhing orgiastically under the coils of several colubrids, ol' Snakey throws in a copperhead to the oblivious deviate. You can guess where her car is about to end up. What happens in the final reel, I leave for you to discover, though, in the odd chance you let your curiousity get the best of you, and snare a copy.


"As I die here on this dirty floor in my drawers, I'm leaving my car to you, Snakey...never push it off a cliff..."
For a murky mutt of a drive-in movie such as this one, the cast is interesting enough. Les Tremayne was a busy actor, right up to his death in 2003; appearing in everything from Monster of Piedras Blancas (1959) and North by Northwest (1959) to King Kong vs. Godzilla (1962), and working on popular soap operas like General Hospital and One Life to Live along the way. His portrayal of Snakey Bender here probably wouldn't make his lifetime highlight reel. Janet Wood, who you'll no doubt remember as Sweet Li'l Alice in Russ Meyer's Up (1976), also appeared in Terror House (1972) and The Centerfold Girls (1974). Alice Nunn, well, she was only "Large Marge" in Pee Wee's Big Adventure (1985), though she also scored genre credits in things like The Fury (1978), Dark Night of the Scarecrow (1981), and Trick or Treat (1986). Richard Kennedy was a native Pennsylvanian who turned up in Invasion of the Blood Farmers (1972), Delinquent School Girls (1975), Candy Tangerine Man (1975) and even Ilsa: She Wolf of the SS (1975). On the scale, Fangs barely manages a bite with the potency of a single Wop. There are far better snake movies out there.


"You're a dead ringer when I sting you with my stinger, 'cuz ev'ry queen needs a kiiiiing!", sings Snakey.

"Up!"(1976)d/Russ Meyer

Enjoying an exemplary early grilling season here at Chez Wop, with the respective swordfish and bison population dwindling at the apetite of yours cruelly, while you guys have quietly hit the site over the past few months like El Duce on a forty-ouncer of Hurricane at nine in the morning, leftover pizza and weight lifting optional.As a token of my gratitude, tonight we'll look over the second last feature from the King a' Gashingas, the potentate of pillow-puppies, the maharajah of major moundage, the one and only, Russ Meyer.For his bicentennial effort, a wild and woolly sex comedy with little regard for cohesion or clarity(and really, who's going into a movie like this looking for that), Russ enlisted the ample charms of the staggeringly beautiful Raven De La Croix, who measured a modest 42DD during her heyday in cult cinema and burlesque and selfishly hogged my adolescent daydreams just like the archetypal brunette sex kitten oughta.Assisting Ms. De La Croix in pitching my Levis brand tent is two time Miss Nude Universe and former arm candy of Russ himself, Francesca Natividad, merely 42D-24-36 in stature at the height of her popularity(she's been measured at 46EEE as recently as '97), a 'Kitten' I wouldn't mind having my inbox flooded with memes of for a change, to be honest with you.Also along for the ride are Janet Wood and a zipper-masked Candy Samples, neither of whom have a problem getting 'em out for the lads in front of a camera, gods bless 'em, a Hitler lookalike gettin' ass-blasted by a pilgrim with a kielbasa-sized cartoon crank in an S & M dungeon...describing the carnage as penned by Meyer and film critic/repressed pervo Roger Ebert in this mammarian whodunit's even gonna be a challenge to a wily wordsmith such as I, believe me.Twisted fucks of the world unite...and all that old pomp and circumstance, as it were...

Adolf Schwartz(Edward Schaaf), sans shorts, enjoys news reports amidst his watersports.
Straight outta the gate we're introduced by a busty nude Greek chorus(Francesca Natividad) with a dubbed British accent, to Adolf Schwartz(Edward Schaaf), a German who bears more than a striking resemblance to that other Adolf chappie, except he's in an S&M dungeon wearing furry assless chaps getting the fuck whipped out of him by a pilgrim named Paul(Robert McLane) while he ravishes various naked ethno-dames.He tips the pilgrim extra to stuff his hentai-esque cock up his whip-rattled ass.One of the more unsexy visuals in film I've ever had to endure, thanks.Later he's brutally murdered in the bathtub of his Bavarian-style Wulf's Lair hideout in northern California when some mysterious intruder in black leather gloves dumps a piranha(or grouper, same thing, I guess) named 'Harry the Nimrod' in with the bubblebathing fuhrer.The Greek chorus pops up in various picturesque environs, bucking and gyrating in nude interpretive grooviness to run down the list of murder suspects and motives to the audience keeping score at home.While the ever-so-slightly pillow-chested Margo Winchester(Raven De La Croix) bobbles her buh-hubbas on a morning jog, she's sexually attacked by a less-than-subtle admirer from afar that she's forced to cream with a post-rape boulder.The whole sordid incident is witnessed by local badge, Homer Johnson(Monty Bane), who offers to corroborate her alibi if she'd only just fuck his brains out once in awhile.She does(does she ever), later scoring a job at Sweet Li'l Alice's, a local restaurant run by it's namesake(Janet Wood) and her husband, Paul.Glad to see he settled down and dropped the whole puritan/sado-sodomizer kick he was on earlier.

Margo Winchester(Raven De La Croix) makes for an impressive seat cover, indeed.
It's not long before Paul, too, falls prey to Margo's bewitching and bountiful bait, and an abridged period of time passes before the narrative gets hung up on who's putting the blocks to who:Paul v.Margo, Homer v. Margo, Paul v. Alice, Homer v. stereotypically garbed native American chick(Margo asks, "Why's your dick so red? You been fucking an Indian??!")... Oh, that's a scream, alright.While captivating a cafe full of pickled cat-calling hayseeds one night with a table dance in a form-fitting gown with a neckline somewhere around the Marianas Trench, she inspires the reticent mountain of a lumberjack (who's a half-case of beer in), Rafe(Bob Schott), to vigorously rape her in front of the crowd of compliant clodhoppers(Meyer's in there among the hillbillies, btw).Apparently, brutal rape's a real crowdpleaser in them thar parts.When Li'l Alice tries to intervene, her clothes disappear as she becomes another layer in the Dagwood-sized rape-wich, which leads to an outrageous knock down, drag out, cafe'-battle/chase-to-the-death complete with obligatory axes and chainsaw.With Rafe and Homer presumably getting acquainted with their respective makers at the bottom of a ravine, Alice takes the opportunity to seduce Margo(naturally, who wouldn't?), which quickly dissolves into two completely naked women chasing each other, going knuckle up in a river bed, all the while laying down one of the most incomparably unhinged dialogue exchanges to ever take place in the annals of cult movie history, if not cinema itself, which I'm gonna let you hear for yourselves when you decide to check out this particular eighty minute example of Meyer's most deliriously over-the-top stuff available.Must be seen to be believed, and I don't often say that about softcore porn.

I'm exempt from tree-fucks on account of termites becoming lovestruck by my jutting Mediterranean wood.
Up! often gets dismissed as Meyer's ugliest, most hateful work due to the comedic approach to the rape scenes and one-dimensional characters with only ruckin' n' fuckin' in mind, but getting caught up in a Bugs Bunny-esque sound effect booooooiiiiiiinnnng! when somebody whips a prosthetic dick out of their pants when there's naked women who are so goddamned voluptuous that they deserve ogling from misogynists and feminists alike, traipsing through lush locales, whose beauty is only intensified by Meyer's loving lens, well then I think you've missed Russ' point completely.Besides, if you read Wopsploitation on anything resembling a regular basis, then a movie like this is right up your alley with double D doses of cartoony sex, violence, and beautiful women in every frame, though, it's admittedly a frightening thing when Roger Ebert is left to his own perverse devices while writing a screnplay, indeed.On the scale, three really Big ones, with no further boob jokes to follow...

Look out, Kitten! He's about to snatch your pelt.Or vice-versa.