Small Town Monsters’ latest documentary, On the Trail of Bigfoot: The Journey cryptid documentarian Seth Breedlove leading his team — which includes Bigfoot researchers like Steve Kulls and Paul Bartholomew — deep into the Adirondacks on the hunt for Sasquatch.
Beyond the story of trying to find Bigfoot, this movie also investigates why researchers spend their lives searching for a creature that many believe doesn’t exist. There’s also a trip to Whitehall, NY, where several police officers reported seeing a Bigfoot on a rural road, as well as some experiences in Lake George and Western Massachusetts.
Unlike many of the Sasquatch docs that are all over basic cable, Breedlove seems to come to this as a skeptic and his experts are never screaming sensationalists. This is real journalism in the pursuit of cryptids.
On the Trail of Bigfoot: The Journey is now available to purchase or rent on a number of platforms from 1091 Pictures, including iTunes, Amazon Prime Video, Vudu and FandangoNOW. You can learn more at the official Small Town Monsters site.
Karen Black is unhappy with her marriage, so she prays with her knees upward with a younger man (David Naughton! who also worked on Kidnapped!, the final film of Howard Avedis) after catching her husband, played by Tony Lo Bianco, aardvarking with one of his used car saleswomen.
So begins the exploration of how a woman finds herself and tries to determine if marriage still makes sense in 1981. I’d say that this is a tender exploration of relationships and how the sexual revolution has changed male and female dynamics. But then I saw the Crown International Pictures logo at the beginning and that Howard Avedis directed this and I realized that we’d be seeing Karen Black in all manner of skimpy costumes.
That said, man, I’ll watch Karen Black in anything. Even this.
But hey — there’s a small role for Sybil Danning, as well as Sharon Farrell. And let’s not forget Sybil also starred for Avedis in his next “affairs” flick, They’re Playing with Fire, and Angel Tompkins seducing her students in The Teacher.
Also — put this into your Letterboxd list of “Movies that have exotic dancing clubs where no one ever gets nude.”
Editor’s Note: This review ran on December 4, 2019. We’re bringing it back for our “Hikmet ‘Howard’ Avedis Week” of reviews.
Growing up, the Saint Francis Hospital would always send people with mental issues to the fifth floor. I’ve had certain family members who would have semi-regular vacations to the fifth floor. It got to the point that whenever someone would discuss whether or not someone was acting strangely, they’d say, “Well, they’re on the fifth floor.”
This was going to be part of slasher month, except that it’s in no way a slasher. Of course, the poster work and other marketing makes it seem that way. It’s not. It’s much stranger.
Kelly McIntyre (Dianne Hull, cryonics enthusiast and an actress in Christmas Evil) is a disco dancer who gets dosed, probably by her boyfriend. This brings her to the fifth floor fo Cedar Springs Hospital, where her boyfriend refuses to help her, accusing her of being suicidal.
Kelly’s attractive, which means that she soon becomes the target of Carl the orderly. He’s played by Bo Hopkins, who I have had the fortune of watching several films with him in them of late. Here he’s out of control, a non-stop erection determined to ruin everyone’s life.
This movie is packed with faces you’ll remember, like Don Johnson’s ex-girlfriend and Warhol movie star Patti D’Arbanville, Cathey Paine (Helter Skelter), horror icons Michael Berryman and Robert Englund, Sharon Farrell (It’s Alive), Anthony James (the chauffeur from Burnt Offerings), Julie Adams Dennis Hopper’s The Last Movie and The Creature From the Black Lagoon), Mel Ferrer, John David Carson (Creature from Black Lake), Earl Boen (the only actor other than Arnold Schwarzenegger to appear in the first three Terminator films), Alice Nunn (Large Marge!), rock and roll photographer Chuck Boyd (who is also in the sexploitation film Dr. Minx and The Specialist, both from the same director of this movie), Machine Gun Kelly (who was the announcer in UHF), disco singer Patti Brooks (whose song “After Dark” was on the soundtrack of Thank God It’s Friday! and recorded two duets with Dan Aykroyd for Dr. Detroit), Milt Kogan (Barney Miller), 1961 Miss Universe Marlene Schmidt (who is in nearly every movie this director did) and Tracey Walter. Yes, Bob the Goon from Batman.
This star-studded journey into mental illness comes straight out of the mind of Howard Avedis, who brought us all manner of literally insane movies like Mortuary and They’re Playing with Fire, two movies that I recommend highly. He knows how to take a salacious topic and make it even smuttier, which I always adore. Well done, Howard (or Hikmet).
It might seem like a TV movie for a bit, then there’s full frontal nudity and you’ll feel safe, like a warm straitjacket has been put on you, allowing you to just lie back and enjoy the magical exploitation within.
From the Editor’s Desk, 2023: Dark Force Entertainment, via their catalog, offers copies of the Code Red reissue for Texas Detour. As we know, Code Red shut down, but this helpful Wikipedia page offers a listing of their past reissues, many which are available as used copies on various seller sites.
We try to be thorough as we build out little slice of movie heaven in the wilds of Allegheny County. And just when we think we have a genre licked — in this case hicksplotation — another film rears its ugly sprockets. And since we’re in the midst of a three-day tribute to all things Howard Avedis, we’re rollin’ his redneck entry.
Yes. The man who bought us the better known Mortuary and the even better known Scorchy— and even gave Adam “Batman” West a lead role with The Specialist — went ‘en git himself sum Smokey and the Bandit whisky backwash, Big Hoss! Yep, we needs to be addin’ this to our ever-growin’ “Top 70 Good Ol’ Boys Film List” of homegrown redneck flicks.
And if that’s not enough: Avedis brings along Patrick “Son of the Duke, John” Wayne (the SOV’er Revenge), Cameron Mitchell, and Priscilla “Three Company” Barnes, later of Rob Zombie retro-horrors fame (The Devil’s Rejects). Is that character actor de jour R.G Armstrong (Evilspeak)? Yep! And be on the lookout for the requite cast creepy, Anthony James (Ravagers; he also stars in Uncle Howie’s 1974 sorta soft-porner, The Teacher — which we are reviewing this week, so look for it).
Good job, art department. Make the typeset really, really small and draw up a hero that looks like Clint Eastwood, so we think we’re getting The Gauntlet (1977).
A trip across the United States takes a wrong turn when three California teenagers (led by matured ’60s kid actor Mitch Vogel, best known for TV’s Bonanza, in his final film role) have their van stolen — from the backlot of Paramount Studios’ Paramount Ranch. Stranded in a backwoods town — with the R.G.’s Sheriff Burt redneck-corruptin’ the joint and criminalizing roadside assistance — our teens serve sum redneck justice on the rednecks.
Ridin’ with Vogel’s Dale McCarthy is Wayne’s big brother Clay and their blonde sister Sugar (Lindsay Bloom of Terror at London Bridge). Clay’s a race car-stunt driver while Dale aspires for country-singer stardom. And to that end: they’re driving across Texas to get Dale to Nashville for an audition.
Cue the escaped convict trio who steal the van.
Then things — as they usually do in Texas — get worse.
Stuck in Podunk, Texarkana, Clay and the clan take a job as sharecroppers for pocket money. Then Clay hooks up with the farmer’s daughter (Barnes’s dad is ol’ Cam), because, well, if Clay didn’t keep it in his pants, this review would end right here. Of course, forget the van and being stranded, Dale, for you need sum lovin’, too. So, to that end, Sheriff Buford T.’s daughter Karen will fit the bill. And Sugar, hell, why not: she hookin’ up with the local greasy monkey at the gas station.
Cue Anthony James. He’s the Sheriff’s creepy son who wants sum of that sweet blonde Sugar. Redneck rape, ensues. Lazy Sheriff corruption, ensues. And all hell breaks loose, ensues . . . all to the tune of a film score by Howard Kaylan and Mark Volman. Who? Oh, right, before most of your times . . . they were in the Turtles (remember the annoying song “Happy Together” that appears on all of those film soundtracks to inspire “nostalgia” in the viewer), then became hippie-rockers Flo and Eddie and were in Frank Zappa’s band The Mothers of Invention.
Wow. Say what you will about the ’70s redneck craze and all of the inspired-Smokey knockoffs, but this one raises all the hicksplotation tent poles to pitch the tents to park yer TransAm and pop an ol’ can of Coors. It’s a trashy, sleazy fun ride, Big Hoss! Seriously, this ain’t bad. And . . . next up for Uncle Howie: Bo Hopkins in the damsel-in-distress-in-the-insane-asylum romp, The Fifth Floor (1978) and Karen Black in the this-isn’t-Fatal Attaction Separate Ways (1981).
What the hell? We had a trailer and copy of the movie bookmarked when scheduling our Howie tribute — and now it’s all gone from You Tube. Yeah, we found two copies of Texas Detour — on two iffy and never-heard-of-before sites — and the Magic 8 Ball says “Just Say No” to the click. But the DVDs and Blus abound and you can get your own at Diabolik Video. Nope. No copies on Amazon Prime or Vudu. Tubi, we need a free-with-ads steam.
While this Avedis romp is more Smokey and the Bandit-inspired hicksploitation than ’70s vansploitation in our opinion, because a van shows up in the opening act (it’s stolen and sets up the film), then reappears in the third act (for our redneck hippies’ great escape), this shows up on the latter lists, as well. We dive deeper into that cruisin’ genre with the definitive van flick: Van Nuys Blvd.
About the Author: You can learn more about the writings of R.D Francis on Facebook.He also writes for B&S About Movies.
Let’s pretend that it’s 1975 and we’re going to the drive-in for real this week! Join us Saturday on the Groovy Doom Facebook page starting at 8 PM East Coast Time. Just a reminder — we introduce the films, give you a drink recipe, show you ads for the film and then you watch it on your own, then come back for the next movie and wrap up!
Up first is David Cronenberg’s Shivers which is on Tubi.
Here’s the drink recipe, which we urge you to drink responsibly!
As a child in the pews of the Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary Church, I always wondered, if the First Commandment is “I am the Lord thy God, thou shalt not have any strange gods before Me,” why are we spending so much time and energy praying to the Virgin Mary instead of God?
James Herbert, in between thinking about hyper intelligent rats destroying humanity, must have had similar thoughts when he wrote the book Shrine in 1983. The book combines so many of my favorite subjects — religious ecstasy, demonic possession, faith healing, fanatical Catholicism and hysteria — and seems like the perfect tale to make into a movie.
So imagine my delight when it really did become a movie and Sam Raimi and Robert Tapert were the producers. My mania got even more intense when they picked the very William Castle release date of Good Friday to open the movie, which pretty much disappeared so quickly that I had to pray to St. Anthony to try and find it. At the time, I blamed the pandemic and the fact that there really aren’t enough theaters yet to support a movie’s release.
Then I finally watched The Unholy at home and, well…
This is legitimately the worst movie I’ve seen in some time, which is a miracle in and out of itself seeing as how many Bruno Mattei and Jess Franco movies I watch. Director Evan Spiliotopoulos has a career mainly in writing and most of those films are animated sequels, such as The Lion King 1 1/2, Tarzan II and The Little Mermaid: Ariel’s Beginning. I have no real idea how he made the move from screenwriting to directing a film that came out from a major company like Sony, because this is a movie rife with issues.
I don’t expect everyone to be Mario Bava and obsessed over color palette, but the tones of this movie shift to the point that it becomes hyper-distracting. I don’t just mean that each location has its own color choice. I mean that there are times that the film looks like its from the late 90s/00s world of crushed black and that silver and blue colortone over everything. At other times, such as inside the church or the tent service that closes the films, the black tones are so clumped up that you start to lose parts of the pictoral integrity. This also makes the movie look like its shot on multiple stocks of film, like Natural Born Killers without a plan. So there are moments when The Unholy has the look of an artier horror movie and others where it looks like it was made for Lifetime. I mean, this had a $10 million dollar budget, so you think that’d be something people would look into.
There’s even an opening of a woman’s spirit being placed inside a doll when she dies so that the reveal of what happens in the movie is completely spoiled, like I am doing now. My reasons are to keep anyone from enduring such a pointless film, while the filmmakers should have been to surprise you later in the movie, seeing as how the central conceit is whether or not Alice Pagett (Cricket Brown) is on the side of the angels, fallen or unfallen.
Disgraced journalist Gerry Fenn (Jeffrey Dean Morgan, who deserves better) is in town to get a web story about a possessed cow. He’s only getting paid $150 for driving across the country, which makes me wonder if he’s ever heard of Upwork, which he could use to to find way better work, or even retail, which would pay better. Instead, while in this town, he breaks open the evil doll to create a fake story, the doll’s spirit goes into the deaf mute Alice, who suddenly starts speaking, hearing and healing everyone in town.
Much like the Amazing Randi vs. faithhealers debate, Gerry wonders if this is all a placebo effect. The Catholic Church seems more than willing to instantly make this a miracle. For all the scorn you can toss the church’s way, they’re bigger skeptics than nearly anyone. Maybe it’s all Bishop Gyles (Cary Elwes, who also deserves better) wanting to erase the sins of the past few decades.
Meanwhile, Alice’s uncle Father William Hagan (William Sadler, who…yeah, but way more than everyone else) starts to not believe that this is all divine, even after his emphysema is healed. Also, Katie Aselton from The League is in this and, yes, she really should have followed the lead of Jordana Brewster and escaped.
The Unholy has some of the worst effects I’ve seen since the early days of CGI, moments of demonic shadows and static that look unfinished at best and hilariously inept at worst. It’s hard to get into a film when you’re nearly seeing the effects fall apart. They looked great in the trailer, but that’s because, you know, you can cut the trailer to take off the bad edges. When they’re up there on screen for an extended period, they’re just plain horrendous.
The movie ends with the most ridiculous montage of religious imagery, stuff that looks like a slideshow someone made in iMovie. We also get St. Matthew 7:15 up there, telling us “Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep’s. clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves.”
I’ll answer this movie with my own quote from the Bible. Let’s use Pslam 101:3. “I will not set before my eyes anything that is worthless. I hate the work of those who fall away; it shall not cling to me.”
Editor’s Note: This review ran on October 30, 2020. We’re bringing it back for our “Hikmet ‘Howard’ Avedis Week” of reviews.
“She’s killed a man, been shot at, and made love twice already this evening…and the evening isn’t over yet!”
I mean, how am I not going to watch this movie after all that?
Man, American-International kept putting out awesome movies late into the 1970’s, with this Howard Avedis written, produced and directed caper (made back when he was still Hikmet Avedis). If you’re looking for more Avedis goodness (Goovedis?), I’d recommend The Teacher, Dr. Minx, The Fifth Floor, They’re Playing With Fire and the awesome Mortuary.
Jackie Parker (Connie Stevens!) is a cop by day and a drug smuggler by night, when she isn’t hooking up with Greg Evigan. She’s after drug dealer Philip Bianco (Ceaser Danova) and has to deal with the awesome William Smith as Carl, one of the henchmen, who leads her on a chase through the streets of Seattle that involves a dune buggy, a vehicle which seems quite out of place in the City of Flowers.
At some point in the 1980’s when this was released on VHS, the original Igor Kantor-supervised soundtrack was replaced with a Miami Vice inspired score, which is completely out of this world great.
Stevens had a clean image before this movie, so it must have been shocking to see her bed guys and suggest that her elder boss get some fellatio to improve his mood. It’s like this movie has the dialogue of an adult film without any of the actual penetration!
Actually, the only penetration is when Carl attacks Scorchy while she’s scoring with a guy, entering her Lake City home to shoot the guy in the ass cheek with a harpoon as if this was an Emerald City version of A Bay of Blood.
Man, I live in Pittsburgh and the movies that the world knows my hometown for all involve zombies, which is certainly an awesome thing, but if I were from Seattle, I would be quite honestly inordinately proud of having Scorchy made there. It’s a near-perfect drive-in movie and ends James Bond style with a barrage of cops descending on the drug dealer’s house and people being shotgun blasted left and right.
A man covering up a crime assumes a nosy neighbor may have seen what he did, leading him to ruin their life. But how much did they see? That’s the story of Massimiliano Cerchi’s (Mayday, The House of Evil, Insane) The Penthouse.
Peter (David Schifter) and Amanda (Vanessa Ore) purchase the condo of their dreams, a gorgeous place that is right over the ocean. They become neighbors with the boaters who dock in the shadow of their high-rise, looking at them as their neighbors.
As they watch the comings and goings of a boater named Charles (Michael Paré), they’ll soon wish they hadn’t seen what looks like him murdering his girlfriend Tess (Krista Grotte Saxon). That’s after Charles has gotten into a fight with Peter, framed him for breaking and entering and what could be the absolute worst thing, taken his dog.
Sure, it’s Rear Window, but Paré is as intense as always, and that’s the kind of movie I love to watch.
Under his other name Alvaro Passeri, Cerchi did the miniatures for Atlantis Interceptors and Fulci’s Warriors of the Year 2072, as well as special effects for The Wild Beasts, even serving as the rock sculptor on Caligula, the assistant art director on Tentacles, the assistant production designer for Alien 2: On Earth and the director of Plankton.
The Penthouse is available on demand and on DVD from Lionsgate.
Dr. Carol Evans (Edy Williams!) keeps having these short affairs but they leave her unsatisfied. She’s just dumped her latest boyfriend (William Smith!) but ends up injuring two kids — David (Harvey Jason) and Brian (Randy Boone) — who somehow end up falling for her. There’s also the bulldozer death of her husband to deal with and a blackmailer as well. And yeah, Smith is not pleased at all that she’s sleeping with a teenager.
But yeah. Most people just watched this to gawk at Edy Williams.
Director Howard Avedis loved making movies about older women deflowering teenage boys. This is also 1975, so get ready for a bleak ending! I think by the 80’s, Avedis figured out how to make thrillers that really thrilled. But here, he’s doing what he can to entertain the audience.
Dr. Minx was Avedis’s follow up to The Teacher (1974), which starred Jay “Dennis the Menace” North. He also released the Adam West-starring The Specialist in 1975 and followed that with Connie Stevens in Scorchy (1976).
Editor’s Note: This review ran on February 8, 2021, as part of our Mill Creek B-Movie Blast month of reviews. We’re bringing it back for our “Hikmet ‘Howard’ Avedis Week” of reviews.
Mill Creek fans have listed Sly Stallone’s The Specialist from 1994 directed by Luis Llosa (of Crime Zone and Anaconda fame) on their lists for Mill Creek’s B-Movie Blast 50-Film pack. Others noted on their lists — uh, oh, there’s that friggin’ plural “S” again, the same “S” that bit me in the arse during out big, British-produced Satan’s Slave (1976) vs. the Indonesian-produced Satan’s Slaves (1982) snafu with our Mill Creek Pure Terror Month review back in November 2019 — that the film included on the B-Movie Blast set is Sergio Corbucci’s The Specialists (1969; starring French rock singer Johnny Hallyday (French rock singer; later of 1987s Terminus) — a film that we didn’t get around to during our “Spaghetti Western Week”* of reviews.
So, plural “S,” damn you, for ye almost deprived us of an Adam West . . . yes, THE ADAM WEST . . . spy thriller directed by Howard Avedis, he who gave us the epics of Connie Stevens as a rogue cop in Scorchyand ex-Waltons frolicking through the supernatural in Mortuary. Yeah, you know us all to well: we feel a “Howard Avedis Week” coming on, too. I mean, with film titles like The Stepmother and The Teacher (sexploitation time!!!!), and movies starring the B-Movie elite of Sybil Danning, Karen Black, Bo Hopkins, Patrick Wayne, Edy Williams (Dr. Minx!!!), and Angel Hopkins (!) with Jay “Dennis the Menace” North — how can we NOT have a “Howard Avedis Week” of reviews?
But. let’s get back to Adam’s West’s B-Movie milieu (Omega Cop, One Dark Night) in the Avedis schlock oeuvre.
As you can see from the theatrical one-sheet, this is all about Budapest, Hungary-imported bombshell Ahna Carpi, who blazed through 70-plus U.S. TV credits (The Man from U.N.C.L.E. is my fondest Carpi-ory) before retiring from the business. But you know her film work in . . . YES . . The Brotherhood of Satan and Piranha (oops, the 1972 one that Joe Dante didn’t direct — damn you, multiple titles) and . . . YES . . . as Tania in Enter the Dragon. And, would you believe she was a child actor in two episodes of the now Antenna oft-run ’60s series Leave It to Beaver (I just got done watching “Beaver’s Sweater” a few days ago!), but, back then, she was “Anna Capri” and not the more porny-reading Ahna, which is the proper, Euro-ethnic spelling of her first name. Oh, and to continue that Brotherhood of Satan degree of separation: Alvy “Hank Kimbel” Moore is in The Specialist (as blackmailing court bailiff) as well, and Avedis’s Mortuary (and a few others) . . . and Cotton Candy (but no Avedis or Capri on that one).
So, there’s your movie trivia for today: What two movies starred a Hungarian child actor and a Green Acres cast member?
See? Reposting that old Sly Stallone review, in error, would have robbed us of all this fun! But, alas . . . I know, I know . . . get to the friggin’ movie, already, R.D. Hey, I’ve haven’t seen this one either, so, let’s go, Adam West fans! Hit the play button!
Now, based on this still from the film (or promo pack from the film) posted by the Digital Content Management Team at the IMDb, you’d think you’re getting a spy thriller with Adam West as a B-Movie James Bond or as an ex-war vet now a kick ass private eye. Oh, ye Mill Creek grazer of the digital divide, how wrong are ye. For this is a Crown International Pictures — serious — court room drama. I know. I never thought I’d type that sentence in a review either. This from a studio that gives us a steady stream of boobs, vans, cheerleaders, female basketball coaches who have sex with male students, and any -sploitation variant you can imagine.
But this ain’t your granddad’s or great grandad’s Perry Mason, Owen Marshall: Attorney at Law, or Matlock (especially not with Nancy Stafford in the cast). This court room caper, again, looking at the rendering of Ahna in that dress, is an R-rated potboiler. But a Joe Eszterhas Jagged Edge neo-noir legal thriller this is not, Motion Picture Association Ratings to protect us youngins, be damned.
West is “The Specialist,” aka defense attorney Jerry Bounds, who’s in a court battle against fellow attorney Pike Smith (western actor John Anderson), an attorney who wants his job back on the board of a (corrupt) water company. So, to assure he wins the case, Pike recruits a sleazy P.I. (is there any other kind), Alec Sharkey (aka Howard Avedis aka’in as actor Russell Schmidt), who, in turn, recruits Londa Weyth (Ahna Carpi), his blonde-n’-hot operative serving as a juror-ringer on the trial, to seduce Bounds and get a mistrial declared.
So, in case you haven’t figure it out: The “Specialist” isn’t West as a cool-as-steel spy or ex-Special Forces-now-an-Attorney (or P.I.) bad-ass; the well-endowed Londa is the special forces sex kitten in these proceedings. Another sultry kitten in our midst is Playboy and Max Factor model Christiane Schmidtmer, you remember her as the hot stewardess from Boeing Boeing (1965) that got Jerry Lewis and Tony Curtis all hot-n-bothered.
I am sure West, looking to be taken seriously as an actor (and deserved, IMO), was hoping this adaptation of the best-selling novel Come Now the Lawyers, would become a box office hit and thrust him into a legit theatrical career with the bigger studios. As did author Ralph Bushnell Potts, himself a Seattle-based Attorney-at-Law (learn more about Potts’s interesting life with his 1991 obituary in the Seattle Times). But, alas . . . Potts’s serious book about Washington State’s early courts system was turned into a Crown International exploitation fest that is not the least bit titillating and fails on the salacious scale that Crown in known for via these Mill Creek box sets. In the annals of Crown International public domaindom, The Specialist is a truly odd duck in the Crown celluloid pond.
There’s no freebie rips online to share, but you can check out the trailer and a scene clip on You Tube. Of course, you can enjoy The Specialist as part of Mill Creek’s B-Movie Blast 50-Film Pack.
About the Author: You can read the music and film reviews of R.D Francis on Medium and learn more about his work on Facebook. He also writes for B&S Movies.
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