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.
Aloysius “Quackser” Fortune (Gene Wilder) takes road apples and sells them to people who have gardens. His family keeps telling him that horses are going to be banned for cars soon, but he loves his work. And he’s in love with an American, Zazel Pierce (Margot Kidder) who is studying abroad. I mean, this movie has to be science fiction. 1970 Margot Kidder in love with a guy who scoops manure?
Director Waris Hussein would eventually make TV movies like The Henderson Monster and Copacabana. This film strains my credibility meter as there’s no reason for these characters to be in love and the end, where — spoiler — Fortune inherits a fortune from that cousin in the Bronx and becomes a tour bus driver, seems just plain too easy.
Nonetheless, 21st Century re-released this as Fun Loving after Wilder’s successful films with Richard Pryor as a new movie, not one that had years of dust on it.
Frank Henenlotter’s Sexy Shockers (September 1 – 7) We all know Frank Hennenlotter as the director of the Basket Case films, Bad Biology, Brain Damage, and Frankenhooker, but he’s also a cinematic curator of the crass! An academic of the pathetic! A steward of sleaze! A sexton of the sexual and the Sexy Shocker series is his curio cabinet of crudity. Skin and sin are mixed together in these homegrown oddities, South American rediscoveries, and Eurohorror almost-classics. Your mind may recoil with erotic revulsion at the sights contained within these films, so choose wisely!
La Noche de Walpurgis (released in the United States as The Werewolf vs. The Vampire Woman and in the UK as both Shadow of the Werewolf and Werewolf Shadow) was the fifth time that Paul Naschy played the doomed lycanthrope Waldemar Daninsky.
Written by Naschy and directed by Leon Klimovsky (The People Who Own the Dark, The Dracula Saga), this film seems like it came from another planet, perhaps because so much of it is in slow motion. It also kicked off a horror craze in Spain that maniacs like me are still enjoying to this day.
After the last film — The Fury of the Wolf Man — Waldemar Daninsky is brought back to life during his autopsy. After all, you don’t remove silver bullets from a werewolf’s heart and expect him to treat you nicely. He kills both for their trouble and runs into the night.
Meanwhile, Elvira and her friend Genevieve are looking for the tomb of Countess Wandessa de Nadasdy. Coincidentally, as these things happen, her grave is near Daninsky’s castle, so our dashing werewolf friend invites them to stay. Within hours, Elvira has bled all over the corpse of the Countess (Patty Shepard, Hannah, Queen of the Vampires), who soon rises and turns both girls into her slaves.
But what of the werewolf, you ask. Don’t worry — he shows up too, after we get our fill of the ladies slow-motion murdering people in the forest. Also, as these things happen, Waldemar must fight the Countess before the only woman who ever loved him, Elvira (Yelena Samarina, The House of 1,000 Dolls) finally kills him again.
There’s also a scene where our furry friend battles a skeleton wearing the robes of a monk in the graveyard. Some claim that this scene inspired Spanish director Amando de Ossorio to write Tombs of the Blind Dead just a few months later.
Daninsky’s lycanthropy is not explained in this one. Was it the bite of a yeti that made him howl at the moon? Is he a college professor or a count? Who cares!
Frank Henenlotter’s Sexy Shockers (September 1 – 7) We all know Frank Hennenlotter as the director of the Basket Case films, Bad Biology, Brain Damage, and Frankenhooker, but he’s also a cinematic curator of the crass! An academic of the pathetic! A steward of sleaze! A sexton of the sexual and the Sexy Shocker series is his curio cabinet of crudity. Skin and sin are mixed together in these homegrown oddities, South American rediscoveries, and Eurohorror almost-classics. Your mind may recoil with erotic revulsion at the sights contained within these films, so choose wisely!
Mondo Cane 2 (1963): New Guinea, Germany, Singapore, Portugal, Australia, America and beyond, no country is safe when Gualtiero Jacopetti and Franco Prosperi have their cameras rolling. Paolo Cavara, who helped make Mondo Cane, had moved on to make other films, including Black Belly of the Tarantulaand Plot of Fear.
This time around, their journey takes us through vivisections, lynchings, tranvestitites, sex clubs, alligator hunts and a trip to a mortician’s school. Everything in this consists of cutting room footage of the first film, including a scene where a monk sets himself ablaze that was totally faked with the help of special effects wizard Carlo Rambaldi.
As the mondo had grown beyond their film, this time Jacopetti and Prosperi go abti-establishment, even laughing about how the dog scenes in the original movie kept them off screens in England. They’re incredulous and probably desensitized over all that they have seen.
Mondo Freudo (1966): Mondo Freudo is all about “a world of sex and the strange & unusual laws that govern it,” as told by two absolute maniacs: the producer/director/distributor team of Lee Frost and Bob Cresse, with Cresse himself ranting as we try and make it through another swing through the world of mondo.
Hollywood strippers, Tijuana hookers, London lesbians, Asian sex shows, Times Square Satanists and topless Watusi clubs. Hidden cameras have recorded everything from teenagers making out to a Mexican slave market, a Black Mass near Times Square, while we also see people get painted, beaten and wrestle in mud.
Cresse would go on to make Love Camp 7 and plenty of other upsetting — or awesome — movies before his life fell apart one day while he walked his dog. Coming across two men beating a woman in broad daylight on Hollywood Boulevard, Cresse pulled his gun and ordered the men to stop. Turns out they were cops and shot him in the stomach and then killed his dog. He’d spend seven months in the hospital with no health insurance, losing most of his fortune.
Frost would make The Black Gestapoand put sex inserts into a foreign mondo all about the occult, creating the near-classic Witchcraft ’70. He was smart enough to not fight any police.
Ecco (1963): Offsetting the globetrotting shock of this film — watch a woman bite off a reindeer’s scrotum with her bare teeth! — is the voice of George Sanders, perhaps way too sophisticated a man for such an endeavor. That said, money is money, and it’s time for Gianni Proia to take us all around This Shocking World (the other title for this mondo).
Beyond the expected lesbians and strippers — show me a mondo that doesn’t have those and it’s amazing that I am seeing them as commonplace at this point — you also get a trip to the original Grand Guignol and get to watch a man repeatedly impale himself.
The US version — re-edited with a new commentary by absolute maniac Bob Cresse and with an Italian title that means “look here” — adds scenes from World by Night No. 2, another Proia mondo, with bodybuilding showgirls, Roller Derby and some vacation footage. Consider it like watching snaps from holiday, except the vacation goers have no compunction showing you absolute filth.
Mondo Balordo (1964): Albert T. Viola — yes, the same man who wrote, directed, produced and starred in Preacherman— completed the American version of this film, known as A Fool’s World in Italy. There, it was directed by Roberto Bianchi Montero, who also made the mondos Africa Sexy, Orient By Night, Sexy Nudo, Sexy nel Mondo, Universo Proibito and Superspettacoli nel Mondo. He would go on to make So Sweet, So Dead.
Imagine a world “throbbing and pulsing with love, from the jungle orgies of primitive tribes to sin-filled evenings of the London sophisticate.” Now imagine those very same words coming out of the mouth of Boris Karloff.
Here are just some of the folks you will meet and sights you will see: a dwarf singer, bodybuilders, bedouin pimps, Japanese models for rent, Indian exorcists, people who can’t stop smoking, Jehovah’s Witnesses, lottery players, a clone of Valentino, high end rich dogs, a Borneo version of Romeo and Juliet, cults, nightclubs, Luna Park, London after hours and so much more.
Mondo Bizarro (1966): “To the worm in the cheese, the cheese is the universe. To the maggot in the cadaver, the cadaver is infinity. And to you, what is your world? How do you know what is beyond the Beyond? Most of us don’t even know what is behind the Beyond.”
Mondo Bizarro blew my mind and it hadn’t even started yet.
Much like all of the Lee Frost and Bob Cresse mondos, this is a mix of both documentary and faked footage. Sure, that one way glass in a changing room is fake, but hey, Frederick’s of Hollywood is real, even if it shows up in so many mondo films that I lose track of which one is which.
This one also has a man sticking nails in his skin and eating glass, the hippies of Los Angeles, Germans watching a Nazi play. Cresse must have been, umm, Cresse-ing his jeans, seeing as how he played a German officer in Love Camp 7 with such aufregung.
The duo also used a high-powered lens to capture what they describe as a Lebanese white-slavery auction. Never mind that it’s obviously Bronson Canyon, the setting for everything from Night of the Blood Beast to Equinox, Octaman and, most famously, the entrance to the Batcave in the 1960’s TV show.
Make no bones about it. This is junk. But it’s entertaining junk.
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. Also, this is Manhattan Baby.
Reviews call this film one of Fulci’s worst films, using phrases like “an impenetrable mess” and “uninspired.” Even the liner notes on the Anchor Bay release say that the film “doesn’t add up.” Woah boy — that would put off anyone else. But me? I’m excited to dig in. Get it? Dig in.
Susie Hacker is in Egypt with her archaeologist father, George (Christopher Connelly, The Norseman, 1990: The Bronx Warriors, the Peyton Place TV series), and journalist mother, Emily (Martha Taylor, better known as Laura Lenzi, who was in The Adventures of Hercules) when a blind woman gives her an amulet. Just as she takes it, her father is blinded while he enters a previously unexplored tomb (but not before he shoots the shit out of a snake).
They return to New York City, where we meet Susie’s younger brother, Tommy (oh fuck, it’s Giovanni Frezza, Bob from The House by the Cemetery), who didn’t go on the trip, and au pair Jamie Lee (boy, naming a babysitter Jamie Lee is in no way a coincidence, right? She’s played by Cinzia de Ponti from The New York Ripper). Susie and Tommy have somehow gained supernatural powers from the amulet (Susie could speak telepathically to her mother before she left Egypt). And laser beams blast George’s eyes, giving him back his vision.
Check out this brother and sister interaction, Tommy’s introduction to the film. Also, if you’re wondering why a little boy is dubbed with the voice of a small girl, then you’ve never watched a Fulci film before.
Susie also has a scorpion — referred to in the beginning as a symbol of death as George captures it to give it to his daughter as a gift — and is playing with it. Wiler, a colleague, talks to George about what he saw in the tumb.
Meanwhile, Emily is working with her wacky colleague Luke (Carlo de Mejo, City of the Living Dead, The Other Hell, The House by the Cemetery) at Time and Life on a story when Jamie Lee calls in a panic. She can’t unlock the kids’ bedroom door and when she tries to enter the room, she sees snakes. Also, we know Luke is wacky because he has on Groucho Marx glasses when we first see him, then he has on googly eyes later. Oh, Luke.
Meanwhile, a security guard is stuck in an elevator. He bloodies his fingers trying to open the doors — thanks, Fulci! — before the floor drops away.
Luke offers to enter the locked door, acting like a goofy magician, when he screams. Jamie Lee runs upstairs but he’s nowhere to be found. That’s because he’s been sucked into a dimensional gateway and is now in the deserts of Egypt, a place where that madcap ponce will eventually die from exposure and dehydration. The funniest thing? Everyone thinks it’s a practical joke. No one ever discusses it again! I mean, Jamie Lee finds a handful of sand in the room and sees scorpions walking all over the place, but all the kids care about is eating dinner. Cue the Fabio Frizzi (who also composed music for Zombi 2, City of the Living Dead, The Beyond and more) music! Obviously, this was all some kind of practical joke, right? Why should anyone call the police?
Speaking of that Frizzi music, it plays as we see Susie’s hand begin to smoke and burn her bed. Then, she levitates. Nothing at all strange, please move along!
Jamie Lee then takes the kids to Central Park, where they all take Polaroids — note to millennials, selfies used to take three minutes to develop. A woman finds one of the photos, which ends up being the amulet instead of the kids. She shows the photo to Adrian Marcato (Cosimo Cinieri, Murder Rockand The New York Ripper), who puts his name and number on the Polaroid and ensures that the woman gives it to Mrs. Hacker. He’s a mysterious man with a mysterious study filled with mysterious books.
Susie and Tommy have now learned how to go on voyages, trips that allow them to appear and reappear at will. Not everyone is able to do this — Jamie Lee goes on a voyage and never returns. And more weirdness starts happening — George’s colleague Wiler looks at the Polaroid of the amulet and then a snake appears and bites him. We even get an awesome snake POV camera in this scene, which I reacted to with pure, ebullient joy. That same photo teleports into Susie’s hand as she has a fit and collapses. Also — how did Fulci, in a film filled with eyeball symbolism, resist the urge to have the snake bite the old man in the eyeball? What a show of restraint!
Groege and Emily decide to go to Macato’s antique shop, which is filled with stuffed birds. And he’s stuffing another one while talking to them. He explains the evil inside the amulet and how it has now infected their daughter and son.
They find the amulet — and a live scorpion that everyone just kind of ignores — in Susie’s bedroom door. She knocks out all of the lights in her room and appears covered in a blue glow before she faints. Marcato appears and tries to link minds with Susie, but he can’t handle the strain. He falls to the ground, bleeding and foaming at the mouth. He’s able to link minds with George, though, showing him the Egypt that his children have been visiting and tells him that Susie is trapped by the stone.
Susie goes into a coma, where she is examined by Dr. Forrester (Dr. Clayton Forrester? No, but he is played by director Lucio Fulci, listed as anonymous in the credits), who finds a cobra mark in her x-rays.
Tommy is left alone in the apartment, his eyes intercut with Marcato’s, who is concentrating on the amulet (there’s some nice Bava-esque blue to red lighting here, with tight shots of the psychic’s eyeballs). Suddenly, blood pours through a wall and Jamie Lee comes busting through, covered in gore (again, Fulci is really restraining himself here). Susie’s machines start to flatline before she awakens, choking and spitting up blood. Blue light links Tommy, Susie and Marcato’s home as he recites an Egyptian spell.
Marcato tells George that his children are safe. He’s removed the curse and taken it upon himself, so that it will not harm anyone else. He asks that George throw the amulet into the deepest part of the river.
After an entire film of holding back on the geysers of fluid and exploding eyeballs that we know and love him for, Fulci goes insane with the ending. We see shadows of the dead birds come to life before they fly at Mercato, slashing at his face. He mixes in some pecking POV shots and then goes completely over the top with repeated shots and a slowly lifting zoom, mixed with more interwoven POV shots, leaving the antique store owner a bloody corpse. The camera pulls back on a slow jazz song as we see the dead man bleed out and lift high above the store, before zooming to one of the stuffed birds. If I’ve learned anything from a Fulci movie, it’s to never work in a library or antique bookshop, because animals are going to eat your face.
Seriously, this jazz song, it’s like the kind of interlude Billy Joel would play before starting “New York State of Mind.”
George throws away the amulet, but now we’re back in Egypt, repeating the cycle as another young girl is given another amulet.
Whew. Manhattan Baby was written by longtime Fulci collaborators and husband and wife duo Dardano Sacchetti and Elisa Briganti. Originally called The Evil Eye and The Possession (it was also released as Eye of the Evil Dead), they settled on the changed title to evoke Rosemary’s Baby. Even the name Adrian Mercato comes from that film. He’s one of the witches mentioned in the book Rosemary reads, All of Them Witches, as he practiced black magic in the Bramford building and is the father of Roman Castevet. The budget would get cut throughout the film — as much as 75% — so that may be why the gore feels so restrained.
This is the final film that producer Fabrizio De Angelis and Fulci would work on together. Fulci disliked the film and felt that he had no choice but to make it; De Angelis was obsessed by it.
Manhattan Baby doesn’t seem like a failure to me. It makes good use of locations like the faux Egyptian pyramids and market, as well as New York City. And the restraint leads to a great climax. That said — it’s a mishmash of The Omen, The Exorcist and The Awakening, with a dash of The Birds. Sure, it’s not a great film or even a good one, but it’s an interesting one. And that’s what I want to watch!
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.
Before Cannon popularized ninjas, they were still showing up in movies like this one, also known as Powerforce and directed by Michael Mak, brother of Johnny and also the director of Sex and Zen.
It stars Bruce Baron (The Atlantis Interceptors, several Godfrey Ho movies like Ninja Champion) as Jack Sargeant, who eventually becomes a member of Dragon Force after facing off with two men dressed as a Chinese dragon, a flute-playing girl and a kabuki fighter, which makes me wonder if this wants to have every Asian stereotype in one breath. He’s protecting Princess Rawleen (Mandy Moore, no not the singer of “Candy”) from a criminal empire who has been killing all the members of the Mongrovian royal family (which is right next to Moldavia). In fact, when she’s hiding out at a friend’s house and trying to take a bath, ninjas show up and kidnap her.
Tan Lung (Bruce Li) is in charge of the Dragon Force and no, Herman Li, Sam Totman, Marc Hudson, Gee Anzalone and Alicia Vigil aren’t in this. Instead, they are a G.I. Joe karate force of extraordinary magnitude. It turns out that in order to win the space race, Russia is going to use acupuncture to take over the mind of the Princess. Russia has ninjas? How will we ever win the Cold War?
Dragon Force even has uniforms and an arms maker, Ah Chu — yes, that joke gets lobbed — who makes them bulletproof t-shirts. Yet this movie is all about the ninjas. Someone says, “Blood will flow from the body’s five holes!” but it’s more like “Ninjas will show up non-stop for the last ten minutes.” A giant tower of ninjas. Ninjas on wires. Ninjas getting their arms ripped clean off. Ninjas blowing up real good. Ninjas having their guts spray all over the screen. All different colored ninjas, all dying in the most incredible ways.
This movie is amazing. You know how they put Criterion blu rays out that are always really stuffy movies that people have long discussions about and we’re supposed to just believe that those are all cinema is? Do any of them have ninjas or good guys who hide in a bakery called the Good Fu King Bakery Co? There are also two attractive women all over Jack at one point and one says, “We don’t have sergeants here, we’re only interested in privates.”
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.
Have you ever paused a movie and yelled aloud, “I LOVE THIS MOVIE!” and you’re all alone in the room? If you’ve answered in the affirmative, you understand the pure joy that I felt while watching this movie.
Dean Miller, an American reporter, is waiting to interview a nuclear scientist when a military plane lands and mutated men emerge, killing everyone in their path. Even the worst wounds only slow them down as they hack their way through their victims, pausing to drink the blood of those they kill.
General Murchison (Mel Ferrer, The Visitor) shuts down any news stories about the attack. Meanwhile, the city is overrun with the killers and their victims, who soon join their ranks. Miller saves his wife at the hospital where she works as the city’s power is shut down.
It turns out that they’re fighting humans who have been contaminated by a leak in the nuclear power plant (that’s why the scientist was meeting with Miller in the beginning) and now they have strength, speed and reflexes beyond the range of normal humans. However, because they can’t regenerate red blood cells, they must consume blood. There’s only one way to kill them, which will be familiar to zombie movie fans: shoot them in the head.
No one is safe — the general is looking for his daughter and her husband, but by the time they are discovered, they are infected and must be killed. And Major Holmes warns his artist wife to stay in the house when two infected men break in and kill her friend and almost murder her. By the time he gets to the house to save her she’s been infected and he must kill his wife.
That’s the theme of this movie — everyone gets turned into something horrible, even a priest at the church where Miller and Anna try to hide. Finally, they make a last stand in an amusement park, using submachine guns and grenades to keep the attacking horde at bay. Major Holmes tries to save them, but Anna can’t hold the rope and falls to her death. This being an Italian movie, we see every moment of her demise.
Miller then wakes up. It was all a dream, except he goes back to the airport and the movie starts all over again!
Known as City of the Walking Dead in the U.S., this is a fast-moving, down and dirty gore packed film. Directed by Umberto Lenzi (Eaten Alive!, Cannibal Ferox), this film feels like it’s out of control from the first scene. Once that plane opens and the mutated fiends emerge, it’s an orgy of heads being opened up, breasts being eaten, gunshots galore and eyes being ripped from their sockets. In short, this is. a true crowd pleaser. How can you not love a movie where a studio full of disco dancers are mauled and murdered by an army of mutated killers?
This was released by 21st Century as City of the Walking Dead.
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.
This was the last movie of a long weekend of drive-in fun. But eight movies in two days can be a test for your endurance and Becca just wanted to hear home. Luckily, I watched the beginning and finished via video in the days following!
Also known as Return of the Aliens: The Deadly Spawn or The Return of the Alien’s Deadly Spawn to cash in on Alien, it was co-written by director/screenwriter Douglas McKeown and producer Ted Bohus (John Dods and Tim Sullivan are also credited).
We first learn of the Deadly Spawn when they kill two campers, then begin moving toward the home of Sam (James L. Brewster, who also shows up briefly in Maniac) and Barb. Also home are their children, college guy Pete and monster kid Charles. Oh yeah — Uncle Herb and Aunt Millie are also visiting. All seems safe and secure until the parents are devoured minutes into the film.
No one knows that yet — Pete is too busy setting up a study date with Ellen, Frankie and Kathy. Meanwhile, Uncle Herb thinks Charles is nuts, so he decides to interview him. Aunt Millie? Well, she’s going to a luncheon.
When an electrician arrives to check on the basement, why shouldn’t Charles put on a monster costume and scare him? Charles soon discovers a variety of Deadly Spawn feasting on the electrician and his mother. Realizing they react to sound — and beating A Quiet Place to the punch by nearly 40 years — he silently escapes.
The study date kids find a dead Spawn that looks like a tadpole. Instead of, you know, throwing it away, they decide to dissect it. And they at the retirement luncheon at Bunny’s house, the Deadly Spawn attack, only for a gaggle of geriatric grandmas to grandly grind them into gore! This is my favorite scene in the movie, just moments of pure mania as these old ladies go buck wild and blend, slice and stab these beasts into nothingness! And the dialogue in this scene!
Bunny: Do you know what I’ve always wanted?
Aunt Millie: What?
Bunny: A really handsome gorilla.
Aunt Millie: A WHAT?
Bunny: A gorilla! But, they don’t seem to make fine ceramics of the great apes, for some reason. They are our nearest relations, you know, the great apes. But they never left the proverbial Garden of Eden like we did. Did you know he’s a vegetarian?
Aunt Millie: Who is?
Bunny: The gorilla! No eating the flesh for him, no sir. He’s peace loving, and adorable!
Aunt Millie: Good Lord. Mother, you’re crazy.
The science buffs try to get Uncle Herb’s opinion, but he’s already being eaten. They run through the house, one step ahead of the Spawn until one bites Ellen’s head clean off her body and tosses her body away! Charles ends up saving the day with a prop head filled with flash powder and soon, the town begins to mobilize, killing every Spawn they can find.
Later that night, one lone cop is outside the house. Everyone is confident that the Deadly Spawn have been wiped out, but that’s when a gigantic one rises from the ground to end the film!
Charles was played by Charles George Hildebrandt, which may seem like a familiar name. That’s because his father is fantasy illustrator Tim Hildebrandt. The film was shot in their house and Tim was an executive producer.
Frank Henenlotter’s Sexy Shockers (September 1 – 7) We all know Frank Hennenlotter as the director of the Basket Case films, Bad Biology, Brain Damage, and Frankenhooker, but he’s also a cinematic curator of the crass! An academic of the pathetic! A steward of sleaze! A sexton of the sexual and the Sexy Shocker series is his curio cabinet of crudity. Skin and sin are mixed together in these homegrown oddities, South American rediscoveries, and Eurohorror almost-classics. Your mind may recoil with erotic revulsion at the sights contained within these films, so choose wisely!
Olga (Audrey Campbell) is the meanest and the best at her job, which is turning out women like Frenchie (Gigi Darlene), plying them with marijuana and if that doesn’t work, just beating them into submission, all so that they turn tricks for her and the syndicate. The syndicate! You will hear their names so many times.
A film made with all voiceovers, White Slaves of Chinatown was directed and written by Joseph P. Mawra, who directed Fireball Jungle and may or may not have directed Shanty Tramp and Savages from Hell. Probably not.
There’s opium everywhere and this feels like those black and white detective magazines you used to see on the newstand that seem way more perverted than any porn magazine, always with women being threatened on the cover and in every story.
Olga would return for four more movies: Olga’s House of Shame and Olga’s Girls with Campbell and Mme. Olga’s Massage Parlor with no Olga showing up and Olga’s Dance Hall Girls with Lucy Eldredge as Olga.
In 1964, this movie was probably as offensive as can be. Today, it’s still pretty scuzzy but you can’t help but find it adorable.
Frank Henenlotter’s Sexy Shockers (September 1 – 7) We all know Frank Hennenlotter as the director of the Basket Case films, Bad Biology, Brain Damage, and Frankenhooker, but he’s also a cinematic curator of the crass! An academic of the pathetic! A steward of sleaze! A sexton of the sexual and the Sexy Shocker series is his curio cabinet of crudity. Skin and sin are mixed together in these homegrown oddities, South American rediscoveries, and Eurohorror almost-classics. Your mind may recoil with erotic revulsion at the sights contained within these films, so choose wisely!
Everything was going so well at the nudist camp. People were playing volleyball and shuffleboard and running and doing all manner of things that happen in a nudie-cutie movie and then, well, a dark stranger intrudes and starts killing women. And that’s when the typical Barry Mahon gets weird.
This is the kind of movie where the evil ape that is the titular The Beast That Killed Women gets shot with ten minutes left and we’re supposed to hang around and wait for the credits.
Barry always rounds up a better-looking cast than many of his contemporaries and this time he has Judy Adler (who starred in another good Mahon movie, Confessions of a Bad Girl), Janet Banzet (who shows up in the Sylvester Stallone softcore movie The Party at Kitty and Stud’s), Darlene Bennett (Nudes On Tiger Reef), Dolores Carlos (Diary of a Nudist), Gigi Darlene (The Love Statue), Louise Downe (who would write She-Devils On Wheels), Marlene Eck (Crazy Wild and Crazy), Christy Foushee (Blood Feast), Marlene Starr (Bad Girls Go to Hell), Sandra Sinclair (Blaze Starr Goes Nudist), June Roberts (All Men Are Apes!) and Joni Roberts (The Girl with the Magic Box).
The ironic thing is one of the women who stayed clothed in this movie, Juliet Anderson, went on to become one of the most iconic adult stars of all time, Aunt Peg. She didn’t start acting in those films until she was 39. She also discovered Nina Hartley, another seemingly ageless actress.
As for the beast that is killing women, if you guessed that Barry is in that suit, you’ve seen as many of his movies as I have.
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.
Since childhood, Kay has constantly suffered from horrifying dreams, some of which are just frightening landscapes that leave her feeling uneasy and others that show loved ones being killed by a supernatural force. Those dreams have come and gone, but now they are happening more often, growing in intensity and impacting her work as an artist.
Worried that all of this stress may hurt her newfound success as an abstract artist, Kay decides to vacation on a small island, along with her husband David (Alan McRae, Three Ninjas), her brother Eric and his wife Brooke. As their pilot drops them off on the island, he mentions that a hurricane is on the way and he has to leave as soon as possible. Even stranger is the fact that the island — which they expected to be a resort town — is a deserted ruin. And not just any ruin, but the one in Kay’s dreams, leading her to feel that everyone is in danger.
David, Eric and Brooke are then killed one after the other. But who killed them? The film gives us three possible stories, each of which are plausible: the pilot never left the island and just dropped them off there to kill them (a theory that is somewhat proved when the pilot is seen later); Kay believes that a monster from her dreams can cross over into reality thanks to the island (which could be true, as the murders only happen when she is asleep) and finally, that Kay is really the killer, falling into a trance and acting out repressed resentment.
After everyone else dies, Kay locks herself into the beach house and tries to stay awake, even burning herself with cigarettes. But that night, the pilot makes his way into the house. She shoots him with a flare gun, killing him and sending the house up in smoke. As she tries to leave, a flaming skeleton is waiting for her.
But wait! It was all a dream, as Kay awakes on Christmas morning in bed. After telling her parents about the dream, they hand her a black cat to her horror. Huh? Supposedly Kay is killed by the Slayer and this is a flashback, but it certainly doesn’t seem that way.
Director J.S. Cardone says that he was inspired by H.P. Lovecraft and the idea of dreams versus reality, but the movie doesn’t have much to do with Lovecraft. That said, this movie looks way more expensive than its budget would lead you to believe, there are some good death scenes and it has a bleak atmosphere.
Here’s a drink.
Hurri-Kay
2 oz. white rum
2 oz. dark rum
2 oz. passion fruit juice
2 oz. orange juice
.5 oz. grenadine
.5 oz. simple syrup
.25 oz. lime juice
Maraschino cherry
Add all your ingredients — other than the cherry — in a shaker filled with ice.
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