EDITOR’S NOTE: As the journey through Cannon continues, this week we’re exploring the films of 21st Century Film Corporation, which would be the company that Menahem Golan would take over after Cannon. Formed by Tom Ward and Art Schweitzer in 1971 (or 1976, there are some disputed expert opinions), 21st Century had a great logo and released some wild stuff.

Ellen Bennett (Katharine Houghton, who brought Sidney Poitier to a supper in Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner) is a bored, rich white woman living in Puerto Rico. Her husband John (James Congdon) is barely around and even when he is, he’s a drunken lout. She’s always looking for things to do, like gossip with fellow elites like Helena (Rita Gam) and admire the lawns of other people in her caste. When one of them dies, her gardener Carl (Joe Dallesandro) becomes available.

Seriously, every time Carl appears, it’s like a magical woman in a beer commercial. Ladies just lose their minds, unable to speak. Maybe it’s because Carl is able to grow flowers that no one else can and faster than anyone else. It’s also because he never wears a shirt.

The only film directed and written by James H. Kay, this starts as an erotic thriller and becomes something wonderfully insane because — spoiler — Carl is really a tree person. Yes, it’s the best use of Joe Dallesandro there can be, just taking off his clothes and speaking in a — pardon this — wooden tone which for once matches the needs of the role.

Imagine a film where lush music plays as Little Joe leads affluent women to their doom, sometimes even turning them into plants. Sometimes, this is a soap opera. Other times, Carl is planting spy flowers all over the house and making party dresses that have thorns that strike bad husbands. It’s also a sex movie that is incredibly chaste, other than seeing Carl swim nude and then later become a plant himself. It has a mood, though, and for some reason, on a Tuesday late afternoon, I became enraptured by the idea of all these society affairs and champagne breakfasts at noon being ruined by a man who, for some reason, just showed up out of the leaves to manicure their hedges. And then they die.

This also turns into a detective giallo at one point and man, I think I love the idea of what this movie could be in place of what it is. I’m being charitable by saying this is a flawed movie. That doesn’t mean that I wasn’t wildly entertained by my experience with it. This is the kind of film that I’ll think about and try to work into conversation for years to come. It now joins my garden of film delights about killer foliage that contains The Freakmaker, The Woman Eater, From Hell It Came, The Crawlers and The Kirlian Witness.

Someday, Severin will do a boxed set of these movies that will come with seeds appropriate to plant for each movie, a branded pot and one of those 1970s plant biofeedback machines that allows you to communicate with your houseplant. It will cost too much for me to be able to convince my wife that I need it.

Filmed in 1973 and originally released by KKI Films in 1974 as The Gardener and then Seeds of Evil, this had several re-releases, including a 1977 Flora Releasing and 1981 New American films distributed run. It also played as Garden of Death. 21st Century also had this in theaters.