Made in Victoria, Australia, Godless: The Eastfield Exorcism is about a young married couple named Lara (Georgia Eyers) and Ron (Dan Ewing). In some ways, you can see the way that she’s acting — nude dancing under the moon, violent behavior and mood swings — as a mental health issue. Or maybe she’s possessed. That’s the way her husband is leaning and he’s nearly begging Dr. Walsh (Eliza Matengu) to sign off on an exorcism. He’s so devoted to getting one, he even gets an unsanctioned exorcist and that’s when things go off the rails.
The man who Ron gets to exorcise his wife is Daniel (Tim Pocock). He tells Ron not to give his wife any food or drink and not to believe anything she tells him, because she’s no longer his wife. She’s of the Devil. Then they invite members of his church to scream at Lara and attempt to physically beat the demon out of her.
This movie is based on the real case of Joan Vollmer, a Victoria woman whose husband Ralph claimed would take on the shape of animals and act like a wanton woman, as well as speaking in demonic voices. Over a four-day period, assisted by a neighbor and phone instructions from his pastor, she was tied to a chair and prayed over while being denied food and water. Other church members soon visited and held her down while her eyes were kept open to witness the prayers. After days of slapping Joan in the face, two demons remained. Matthew Nuske joined the group and he led the group in destroying Joan’s greenhouse, all of her flower beds and wrapping the house seven times in clear wrap. Then, he smashed Joan’s head into walls before having five people sit on her body for hours, crushing her internal organs and giving her a heart attack. The pastor came at this point, as a message from God told him that he could just lay hands on the dead Joan and bring. her back to life. Two days later, she was still dead.
Neighbor Leanne Reichenbach got four months for manslaughter and false imprisonment. Church member David Klingner received three months, exorcist Matthew Nuske was found guilty of false imprisonment and received a suspended sentence and Ralph Vollmer was convicted of false imprisonment and reckless injury. He served no jail time, moved to Queensland and remarried.
Not only could this movie happen, it already has.
Directed by Nick Kozakis and written by Alexander Angliss-Wilson and Sarah Baker, this isn’t the movie for you if you’re looking for stuttery editing, herky jerky mannerisms and spinning heads. This is a more psychological exploration of how demonic man and religious belief can be.
Directed and co-written (with Geoffrey Mead, who plays Kid Curry) by Anthony C. Ferrante, Butch vs. Sundance is the sequel to another Tubi Original, Butch Cassidy and the Wild Bunch. This time, Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid become enemies when Sundance is offered a deal to betray Cassidy in order to have his crimes erased.
Bruce Dern returns as Mike Cassidy and — the highlight for me — is the returning villain Pinkerton Detective Charles Siringo, who is played by Jeffrey Combs. The woman who is coming between the former partners, Etta Place, is played by Nikki Leigh.
Shot in New Mexico at the same time as the first film, this certainly won’t replace any of the Sergio Leone or Sergio Corbucci movies in my heart, but it certainly moves quickly and has some thrilling train-based robbery scenes. There are also enough double, triple and maybe even quadruple crosses in this to keep you guessing right until the end.
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“Evil does not die…it waits…to be reborn…”
Yet sadly this would be the last movie for William Girdler, who died in a helicopter crash while scouting locations for his next movie.
It’s a shame because Girdler had a talent for taking cheap movies with big ideas and making them beyond entertaining. This movie features a wild cast for him, including Tony Curtis as psychic Harry Erskine, Michael Ansara as shaman John Singing Rock and Susan Strasberg as our heroine Karen Tandy — who is suffering from a gigantic growth in her neck that ends up being the reincarnation of Misquamacus, a wonder worker of the Wampanoag tribe.
Misquamacus comes from the book of the same name by author Graham Masterton, who brought the villain back in his novels Revenge of the Manitou, Burial, Manitou Blood, Blind Panic and Plague of the Manitou, as well as the short story “Spirit Jump.”
Plus, there’s Stella Stevens, Burgess Meredith, the “First Lady of Radio” Lurene Tuttle, Ann Sothern and Jon Ceder on hand for this body horror by way of possession films by way of Native American hoodoo bit of lunacy. I also kind of dig how the posters would say, “In the grisly tradition of Alien” when it was made a year before that movie.
I’ve gone back and watched this again and I’m amazed by it. The image of Misquamacus coming out of Strasberg’s body is horrifying and the end battle, with Curtis yelling into the void of space, is the kind of movie magic I want more of.
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William Girder died in a helicopter crash while scouting locations in 1978. If that hadn’t ended his life, who knows the heights of lunacy he would have achieved?
This had to have been the first movie about the loss of Earth’s ozone layer. Who knew that it would drive everyone nuts, including animals? Certainly not the hikers in this tale who turn against one another and try to survive all of the animal assaults.
Steve Buckner (Christopher George, who is fighting with Michael Pataki and George Eastman for most appearances on this site) has a dozen or so hikers who are about to go to Sugar Meadow for a nature hike, even though Ranger Chico Tucker (former NFL player Walt Barnes) tells him that the animals have been acting strangely.
Along for this nature trail to hell are anthropologist Professor MacGregor (Richard Jaeckel, Grizzly), a married couple named Frank and Mandy Young (Jon Cedar, who in addition to being a recurring Nazi on Hogan’s Heroes was also the co-star, co-screenwriter and associate producer of The Manitou and Susan Backlinie, the first victim in Jaws), rich Shirley Goodwyn (Ruth Roman from The Baby!), her son Johnny, teenage lovers Bob Dennins (Andrew Stevens, who was in the Night Eyes films) and Beth Hughes, a former pro football player dealing with cancer named Roy Moore, a magical Native American guide named Daniel Santee (Michael Ansara, Killer Kane from the 1980’s Buck Rodgers series as well as the voice of Mr. Freeze), a television reporter named Terry Marsh (Lynda Day George, always ready to scream “BASTARDS!”) and finally, a frenzied Leslie Neilsen in the role of his career as Paul Jenson, an ad executive who acts like every account guy I’ve ever had to deal with in my 24-year-long ad career.
Before you know it, wolves are attacking people in sleeping bags, vultures circle overhead, hawks knock women off cliffs, Leslie Nielsen goes beyond bonkers and kills a dude with a walking stick and threatens to assault women before wrestling a bear and getting his neck torn out, rats attack the sheriff who decides to eat before trying to figure out how to deal with this emergency, dogs turn on the people they loved, rattlesnakes bite people and the military dons hazmats suits to deal with all of it.
If you haven’t figured it out yet, this movie is stupid. And awesome. It’s stupid awesome. And if you only know Nielsen from his later comedic roles, take a look at him in this movie. I love this movie. I don’t care what you think of me.
You can get this on Tubi or get the blu ray from Severin.
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From 1972 to 1978, William Girder directed nine feature films and would have probably never stopped, were it not for the helicopter crash that took his life while scouting the Philippines filming locations. From Asylum of Satan and Three on a Meathook to The Manitou, Sheba Baby and Project: Kill, his films may have been derivative but they made money.
Here’s the best example. Around these parts, Girder is celebrated for Abby, a movie that was removed from theaters because of its similarity (let’s say total ripoff) of The Exorcist. That brings us to Grizzly, which is essentiallyJaws on dry land. With a bear. A grizzly bear.
Grizzly found its inspiration when its producer and writer, Harvey Flaxman, came face to face with a bear during a camping trip. Co-producer and co-writer David Sheldon thought about how they could make a bear version of Jaws and they wrote a script that Girdler discovered and offered to finance, as long as he could direct.
Grizzly begins with military vet and helicopter pilot Don Stober (Andrew Prine, The Town that Dreaded Sundown, The Eliminators, Amityville II: The Possession) flying over a national park and explaining how the woods remain untouched, much like they were in when Native Americans made their homes here.
The first two attacks happen quickly — in bear POV no less — when two female hikers are dismembered by the ursus arctos horribilis villain of this story. That brings in park ranger Michael Kelly (Christopher George, Gates of Hell/City of the Living Dead, Day of the Animals,Mortuary, Pieces) and photographer Allison Corwin (Joan McCall, who besides being in Devil Times Five is also married to the film’s writer, Sheldon) in on the case.
At the hospital, a doctor tells the park ranger that a bear killed the girls, but the park’s supervisor blames the ranger and naturalist Arthur Scott (Richard Jaeckel, The Dark, Mako: The Jaws of Death and TV’s Salvage 1) for the girls’ deaths. And guess what? Just like Jaws, there’s no way the park is getting closed before tourist season.
The rangers all decide to search the mountain for the grizzly, which isn’t accounted for in their census of animals in the park. One of the rangers — of course — decides to get nude in a waterfall because that’s what you do when you’re hunting a killer bear and gets murked for her stupidity.
Kelly and Stober think they have found the bear from the air, yet it’s just naturalist Scott wearing an animal pelt and tracking the bear himself. Scott tells them that this bear is actually a prehistoric version of the grizzly that stands 15 feet tall and weighs at least 2,000 pounds.
No matter how many people the grizzly kills, no one will close the park. So when the story becomes national news, the owners of the park — a national park can have owners? — allow amateur hunters to shoot the shark (this has nothing to do with the very same thing happening in Jaws, right?). Those hunters are pretty much the worst people ever, as they use a bear cub as bait, thinking the grizzly will protect its young. Nope — it eats that baby bear and keeps on coming.
The grizzly literally shreds his way through the park and nobody closes it down until it murders a young mother and mutilates her child. And get this — the grizzly is so smart, it knows how to bury the naturalist in the ground and then waits for him to wake up so it can kill him. Can a bear be a slasher killer? Well, we already know that Bigfoot can be, thanks to Night of the Demon.
The grizzly kills every hero in this movie other than Kelly the photographer, who magically finds a bazooka in the wrecked helicopter and remembers the end of every shark movie: you must blow this beast up real good. She does and that’s the end of Grizzly.
An interesting personal note: I was telling my dad about this movie and he remembered that it has played on a bus that took he and my mother on a casino trip. That’s right — at 1 AM, pitch blackness, the TV on their bus blared this gorefest as loudly as possible. “I couldn’t wait for that movie to end,” was my mother’s review. My father’s was a bit kinder.
Warner Brothers originally wanted to finance Grizzly, but were furious that Edward L. Montoro and Film Ventures International (FVI) had taken the project. That’s because a year before, the studio sued both of these companies for copyright infringement when they released Beyond the Doorin the US.
Sadly, while Grizzly was one of 1976’s best-performing films, earning $39 million worldwide (adjusted for inflation, that’s around $177 million in 2018 dollars), its distributor Edward L. Montoro and Film Ventures International kept all the profits. Girdler and Harvey Flaxman and David Sheldon (the film’s screenwriters/producers) had to sue to get their share.
Even after all that, Girdler still directed Day of the Animals, a spiritual sequel to Grizzly, for Montoro. While this film added Leslie Nielsen and Lynda Day George to the returning cast of Christopher George and Richard Jaeckel, it wasn’t as successful.
Grizzly just seems like a movie that’s buried in legal shenanigans. A sequel, Grizzly II: The Predator (also known as Grizzly II: The Concert, a title that would assuredly guarantee that I would buy this film) was made in 1983.
Filmed in Hungary by André Szöts and written by Sheldon, the co-producer and writer of the original, it was never released. The film had Louise Fletcher, John Rhys-Davies and unknowns but about to be big stars like Charlie Sheen (who took this movie over the lead in Karate Kid), George Clooney and Laura Dern in the cast, as well as live performances (hence Grizzly II: The Concert) by musicians like Toto Coelo (who had one song I can name, “I Eat Cannibals Part 1”) and Landscape III.
The movie was such a mess that the film’s caterer ended up rewriting it. And while the main filming was completed, special effects and all of the actual bear footage wasn’t. That’s because the film’s executive producer Joseph Proctor had disappeared with the money (and may have even been already jailed when filming began). While a mechanical bear was to be used, there was still footage shot of a live bear attacking concert-goers filmed (!). There’s a bootleg workprint, but the full film has ever emerged. This New York Post article has even more amazing info about Grizzly 2. Now that film has been released, if you’d like to see it.
Finally, a trivia note for comic book fans. The amazing poster for this movie? Neal Adams did the art.
And in the universe of Tarantino, Don Stober was played by Rick Dalton, not Andrew Prine.
You can watch this on Tubi or get it from Severin.
William Girdler said that Project: Kill was “…the beginning of what I can do if I’m given the opportunity. Here I’m not pinned down by cliches or lousy material. It’s the only picture I’m really proud of.”
John Trevor (Leslie Nielsen) has spent six years as part of an MK-ULTRA experiment that gives American soldiers better killing abilities through training, drugs and hypnosis. It’s kind of like a cult for killers and now, he wants out. He even tells his second-in-command Frank Lassiter (Gary Lockwood) that he’s about to escape. It’d all be great if the withdrawal didn’t make John incredibly violent or that an Asian gang wasn’t looking for him in the hopes of taking the drugs from his system and using them for their own army.
Come for Nielsen dressed like a 70s dad despite being billed as an action star, stay for his romance with Nany Kwan and by all means, come back for his fight with Lockwood on a beach. It even ends a lot like Scorpio, where the older killer tells the younger one, “Now they’re going to come after you.”
On the William Girdler web site, Girdler’s insurance man Joe Schulten said, “Project Kill was supposed to be distributed in a lot of countries. Nancy Kwan was an international star at the time, and it was booked up all over the place. But the man who was going to distribute the movie was either killed or committed suicide right before the film was scheduled to come out. So the release was tied up in an estate dispute. I don’t think Project Kill was ever released to movie theaters. I think it only showed up on cable in the eighties.:
Producer David Sheldon had the answer: “Project Kill was released in the theaters, though not a very wide release. It has been on television quite a bit and there’s a home video in the stores. We pulled the picture from Arnold Kopelson (Inter-Ocean Films) who was supposed to distribute the film overseas, but was taking too long. A company called Sterling Gold tried to take it next, but the owner was found murdered organized crime style. Finally, I put it with Picturmedia who released it theatrically and sold the home video rights. The CEO of Picturmedia is Doro Vlado Hreljanovic. Picturmedia has done a poor job in releasing the picture. It deserves more.
That said, it does have Vic Diaz in it.
Writer Galen Thompson went on to script Superstition, The Eviland several Chuck Norris projects while David Sheldon was part of Grizzly, Lovely but Deadly and Foxy Brown.
June 19: Junesploitation’s topic of the day — as suggested by F This Movie— is Blaxploitation! We’re excited to tackle a different genre every day, so check back and see what’s next.
Private detective Sheba Shayne (Pam Grier) has come back home to Louisville from the big city of Chicago and she’s fighting back against the criminals out to ruin her father’s insurance business. Teaming up with her father’s partner — and her former lover — Brick Williams (Austin Stoker), she does exactly what she set out to do, even if the local cops warn her off and the thugs blow up her car.
They can kill her dad, they can drag her in a speedboat but they can’t make her give in. This is the kind of movie where Pam Grier effortlessly chases bad guys on a jet ski and dispenses them with a spear gun. In short, everything you want, including Pam kicking at least one of the bad guys directly in the balls.
David Sheldon and William Girdler sold this movie to Samuel Arkoff by telling him they already had a script done. Well, they didn’t. A day later, after selling the movie, they did.
This was also the last movie that Girdler would make in Kentucky, now ready to move onward.
As much as I like Girdler’s films, Jack Hill knew how to make Pam Grier movies. The Big Doll House, The Big Bird Cage, Coffy and Foxy Brown really are a high bar to achieve, if you think about it.
Warner Brothers’ lawyers must have had the best holiday season ever in 1974, thanks to all of the work they were getting shutting down ripoffs of The Exorcist. The success of Abby — $4 million in a month for its distributor, American International Pictures — led to the lawsuit that pulled all prints of the film. That’s probably why the copy I have has been battered to, well, hell and back.
From horrorpedia.com — Abby was a big success. Maybe too big for Warner Brothers’ comfort.
Directed by William Girder (Three on a Meathook, Jaws ripoff Grizzly, Day of the Animalsand The Manitou), Abby is quite simply the African-American take on a possession film. Abby isn’t possessed by Satan, though. Nope, she is being taken over by Eshu, the West African trickster god, master of chaos and whirlwinds. Dr. Garrett Williams (William Marshall, not only Blacula but the King of Cartoons!) opens the film by explaining that Eshu is the most powerful of all earthly deities, the very embodiment of chaos. While on a Nigeria cave dig, he finds a puzzle box (I’d call it the Lamont Configuration, but would anyone get the Sanford and Son meets Hellraiser reference?) carved with phallic symbols. Once opened, a wind blows out that knocks the doctor and his men down, then travels the whole way to Louisville, Kentucky. There, it finds Abby, the wife of Dr. William’s son Emmett (Terry Cotter, Colonel Tighe from the original Battlestar Galactica).
Abby may have been a marriage counselor and a member of the church, but that’s all over. From cutting herself while making chicken to flipping out on anyone and everyone, Abby gets all the trademarks of possession, if those trademarks had the same voice as The Exorcist speaking in jive, calling people motherfuckers. When her husband tries to make love to her, she kicks him right in the balls. Also, Abby looks like a grey version of The Hulk when she is possessed. Basically, I just want you to know that everything Abby does is awesome and amazing and perfect.
Despite the efforts of white doctors and Dr. Williams, Abby escapes, sending a windstorm after everyone. Emmett runs after her, but since Abby has his car, he flags down a car. He then pulls a white woman out of the car and chases after her! Luckily, Abby’s brother, Cass, is a cop who is able to smooth all of this over. He’s played by Austin Stoker from the original Assault on Precinct 13 and Battle for the Planet of the Apes.
So where does Abby go? Why only to see some stock footage of Louisville’s finest clubs! Abby even tries to hook up with a bunch of guys who can’t satisfy her, so she kills them (but not before we get a dizzying POV shot of possessed Abby). The first dude literally gets killed when the car he was making out with Abby bounces up and down while smoke comes out of the windows.
Abby is on the make with a white guy who talks like WC Fields, but her husband and brother are on the hunt, searching through bars and b-roll footage!
They find her in a bar where she turns the entire bar against her husband before her brother starts shooting his gun up in the air. But oh shit — Dr. Williams shows up to battle it out with Abby!
Luckily, everything works out and Abby is saved. I mean, sure, a few people died along the way and some lady got carjacked and may never get over it. But people — Abby is fine and that’s all that matters.
Carol Speed is awesome in this film. And she wasn’t even the first choice for the title role! She won the role after the original actress was fired after demanding an on set masseuse! She even wrote her own song, “Is Your Soul a Witness?” that she sings in one of the church scenes. She also mentioned that the film was cursed, thanks to plenty of accidents, sickness and even tornadoes that tore through the set. Supposedly, generators would fail whenever she was in makeup, but I’d chalk these stories up as complete Hollywood carny bullshit. Which is to say, yes, totally, this movie was cursed and African penis gods rained insanity down on the set!
EDITOR’S NOTE: This was originally on the site on .
A police officer becomes obsessed with The Zebra Killer, who has kidnapped his girlfriend and has kept on murdering people. The Get-Man of the title refers to this cop, who goes by Lt. Frank Savage and is played by Austin Stoker.
In real life, the zebra murders — called that because of the police frequency used to communicate the crimes — were a string of racially motivated murders committed by a small group of Black Muslims in San Francisco Some think that the Death Angels, which is what the killers wanted to be known as, may have killed more people — up to 73 — than all other 1970s serial killers put together.
This movie, however, has the killer appear as a white man in blackface and afro wig, killing in random ways, much like the Zodiac Killer, who inspired Scorpio in Dirty Harry, which therefore is ripped off by this film.
If you’re making a blacksploitation version of a Hollywood film, go with the best. Go with William Girdler, who also made Abby, which is one of my favorite Xeroxorcist films. You can also find this movie as Combat Cops and The Get-Man, which are not anywhere near as good.
EDITOR’S NOTE: This was originally on the site on .
While the slasher genre really starts in 1978 (or 1979, when Halloween really took off), there are movies before that are nascent starting points. This was William Girdler’s second film after Asylum of Satan, made with money from his trust fund. It’s based on Ed Gein, as are Psycho, Deranged, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and many, many, many more.
Filmed in and around Louisville, Kentucky, the home of the director (whose also wrote and performed much of this film’s score), this is the tale of Billy Townsend (James Carroll Pickett), who seems like such a nice boy. He helps four girls who have gone to the lake for vacation when their car breaks down. But Billy has secrets and a father (Charles Kissinger, who also appears in Girdler’s films Abby, Grizzly, The Manitou, Asylum of Satan and Sheba, Baby) who loves his son so much that he’ll help him get out of any trouble.
This has one of the best titles ever, as well as a great tagline — “WARNING: Not For The Bloody Mary For Lunch Bunch!” — and, as stated before, the notion of being an early slasher. It’s worth checking out to see where the form got its start. When I was a kid, this film’s cover freaked me out, as did the implications of its title. The actual film itself seems laid back and very 70’s, including an anti-Vietnam speech delivered directly to the camera.
You have to love a movie that is willing to totally forget any forward progress by having its antagonist decide to head downtown, watch some bands, see The Graduate and ponder life instead of continually killing people. You never see Michael Myers decide to take a break and grab a beer, you know?
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