July 14-20 Vanity Project Week: “…it might be said that the specific remedy for vanity is laughter, and that the one failing that is essentially laughter is vanity.” Are these products of passionate and industrious independent filmmakers OR outrageous glimpses into the inner workings of self-obsessed maniacs??
Directed, written by and starring Rusty Nails, this starts with siblings Franny (Tracey Hayes) and Zoe (Nails) drinking tap water that causes giant zits to form on the tops of their heads. And if they don’t keep eating junk food, they become zombies. And oh yeah, those zits are constantly spraying people and making even more potential zombies, all because big business and the military-industrial complex spiked the town’s water.
The thing is, the kids are really alright. Sure, they have zit heads, but all they want to do is go to the mall or bowling. They didn’t ask for this.
I kind of love the one tough girl who keeps busting her boyfriend’s balls about him going bald. That’s the kind of playful banter that makes me marry someone.
Oh yeah — the movie.
It’s a 50s science-gone-wrong movie that somehow has disgusting moments of exploding zits and eating anything greasy, but has such a goofy and sweet heart that it feels like it struggles to find an audience. It’s too gross for normal people, not twisted enough for gore hounds. And man, the music is pretty great, but I was also the right age in the 90s to know most of it.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Tank was on the CBS Late Movie on November 11, 1988.
Directed by Marvin J. Chomsky (Evel Knievel) and written by Dan Gordon (Rambo: Last Blood, Surf Ninjas), Tank has U.S. Army Command Sergeant Major Zack Carey (James Garner) just wanting to retire, despite the army trying to keep him enlisted. An older son had joined and died in training, which has put distance between Zack and his son Billy (C. Thomas Howell).
Zack owns a World War II tank, as one does, and he’s also a pretty good guy. One night at a bar, he watches Deputy Euclid Baker (James Cromwell) slap around a waitress named Sarah (Jenilee Harrison). We soon learn that he and Sheriff Cyrus Buelton (G.D. Spradlin) have been turning local girls into prostitutes. Zack goes against them, which ends up with his son being set up with drugs at school. Even when he offers them his life savings — his wife LaDonna (Shirley Jones) is not pleased — they keep screwed him and his family over.
So, as you’d hope, Zack takes his tank and smashes up the police station and a work camp. Taking his son’s lawyer with him, they make their way to Tennessee from Georgia in the hopes that they can get the evidence to the right people to clean up this town. He becomes a folk hero, and even bikers help him get over the state line.
July 14-20 Vanity Project Week: “…it might be said that the specific remedy for vanity is laughter, and that the one failing that is essentially laughter is vanity.” Are these products of passionate and industrious independent filmmakers OR outrageous glimpses into the inner workings of self-obsessed maniacs??
Also known as The Godfather and the Lady and Six Champions Go Wild, this starts with a girl — I should say dame, in the parlance of this movie — named Caress Softly (Sharynne Dale, The Runaways) learns that some hitmen want to rub out Johnny Stiletto. She quickly warns Stiletto’s gang, who box the hitmen with wacky sound design.
Oh yeah. So I should tell you who is in this.
Johnny is Peter Savage. A self-taught writer, actor and filmmaker, Savage wrote the book that Raging Bull is based on. He’d been friends with Jake La Motta since they were kids and the two boxed together. He directed, wrote, produced and stars in this. Johnny is the godfather to the Cauliflower Cupids gang, who are made up of six world boxing champions: Gentle Jim (Jake LaMotta), The Rocker (Rocky Graziano), Willie the Eye (Willie Pep), Bennie the Bug (Paddy DeMarco), Tony the Bomber (Tony Zale) and Dinty the Dope (Petey Scalzo).
Johnny wants to retire so that his daughter Paulette (Carol Walker) can have a better life than he did, especially because she’s pregnant with rich young man Armand’s (Joe Bennet) child. He demands that they get married, but his guardian, Aunt Nira (Jane Russell), is standing in the way of their enforced bliss.
She’s getting all of her money from Uncle Bruno (Bud Truland), who hates the rest of the family, who all use him for money. So Johnny gets made up like Bruno, they change the will, fake the old man’s death and Johnny and his boys — who keep refusing to allow him to retire — can go out in style.
That is, if John Bradley (Alan Dale) doesn’t arrest them first.
This ends with Johnny serving as Nira’s love slave, a role he expected from her, and is even forced to kiss her feet. That’s a pretty BDSM close for an early 70s mob movie.
Jane Russell is 45 in this (it was shot in 1966 and didn’t come out until 1970) and looks better than women twenty years younger. She’s way better than this movie deserves, and yet I love that she’s in it.
As for Savage, he comes off a lot like Duke Mitchell, which is a compliment. He’d already made The Runaways, but would go on to direct and write Hypnorotica (Jamie Gillis is in it!), the American version of The New Life Style (Just to Be Loved), Sylvia (an X-rated version of Sybil that has Sonny Landham in its cast) and They Shall Overcome. He’s in all of those films and also shows up as a john in Taxi Driver, as DeMarco in Crazy Joe, as a boss in Double Agent 73, as an assistant in New York, New York, as a lawyer in Firepower, as Jackie Curtie in Raging Bull and as Thomas “Mr. T” Stokely in Vigilante, a movie that William Lustig dedicated to him.
As for the boxers in this, several of them show up in other films:
Jake LeMotta was also in Firepower, Hangmen, Maniac Cop, The Runaways, Who Killed Mary Whats’ername?, The Hustler, Rebellion In Cuba, La Violenza dei Dannati, The Doctor and the Playgirl and, of course, Confessions of a Psycho Cat.
Rocky Graziano appeared in several films, including Tony Rome, The Doctor and the Playgirl, Teenage Millionaire, and Country Music Holiday, where he played himself alongside June Carter, Zsa Zsa Gabor, Ferlin Husky, and numerous country musicians.
Willie Pep was only in one other film, Requiem for a Heavyweight, just like Tony Gale, who was also in The Golden Gloves Story. This is the only movie that Paddy DeMarco and Petey Scalzo were in.
I’ve been looking for this movie for years and am so excited that I finally found it. It’s by no means excellent or even good, but to me, it’s everything that I wanted it to be.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Falcon’s Gold was on the CBS Late Movie on May 1 and August 26, 1987.
This played on the CBS Late Movie as Robbers of the Sacred Mountain, which is very much a “we have Raiders of the Lost Ark at home” title. Made for Showtime, this film was the very first TV movie produced for cable TV.
They say it’s based on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Challenger’s Gold, but if Indiana Jones hadn’t been a hit, I doubt it would have been made.
Reporter Hank Richards (Simon MacCorkindale, Manimal) and Professor Christopher Falcon (John Marley) learn that a meteorite with cavite in it has crashed to Earth. If the wrong people find it, they could make a laser weapon. Joined by the professor’s granddaughter Tracey (Louise Vallance) and jungle guide B.G. Alvarez (Blanca Guerra, Santa Sangre), they head to South America to find a fertility idol, which ties into this, trust me, and leads to them battling the forces of Ivar Murdoch (George Touliatos).
This is the only movie that Bob Schultz directed, but he was a technical director on several TV shows like Three’s Company, The Ropes and the TV special Telly…Who Loves Ya, Baby? It was written by Olaf Pooley (Crucible of Horror, The Godsend) and Walter Bell.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Lost Continent was on the CBS Late Movie on April 28 and October 25, 1972 and November 22, 1973.
Produced, directed and written by Michael Carreras — based on Dennis Wheatley’s novel Uncharted Seas — this is a rare Hammer that’s an adventure movie and not horror. It taught me if you’re taking a tramp steamer, make sure they’re not carrying white phosphorous to sell. Also: Check out the weather, because if a hurricane is coming, it’s not a good idea to be on a boat. The stolen stuff blows up, the hurricane hits, the boat crashes.
This will bring you to an island with a shipwrecked Spanish galleon and an island ran by the child descendent of Sanish conquistadors. That kid gets stabbed at one point — by a cleric — and a priest with the plague and all of his monks burn inside a church as pipe organ music plays. There’s also a shark attack, a flare gun accident, killer seaweed, weird monsters, barbarians, leprosy, a giant hermit crab, a big scorpion and so many ideas that you’ll wonder if you’re still watching the same movie.
It has a theme song by The Peddlers, so it has that going for it. Hammer girls include Hildegard Knef (who would play the witch in Witchery), Suzanna Leigh (Lust for a Vampire) and Dana Gillespie (who dated Bowie when she was 14) — who plays a native girl named Sarah who uses balloons and snowshoes to walk through the deadly seaweed. Huh? Yeah!
July 14-20 Vanity Project Week: “…it might be said that the specific remedy for vanity is laughter, and that the one failing that is essentially laughter is vanity.” Are these products of passionate and industrious independent filmmakers OR outrageous glimpses into the inner workings of self-obsessed maniacs??
After being kicked out of art school. Greg Pead co-wrote, co-produced, edited and directed at his first film, Coaltown, “with the assistance of the Australian Film Institute.: It explores the social and political history of coal mining and was nothing like the rest of his films, of which he took on the name Yahoo Serious.
His first film, Young Einstein, was a $25 million dollar worldwide success on a $5 million dollar budget. Now, you can scoff at the idea that Einstein invented beer bubbles, rock music and surfing before dating Marie Curie, but it wasn’t a bad film. It did OK in the U.S., enough that his next film, Reckless Kelly, was released here and bombed. It did well enough in his native land of Australia for Mr. Accident to come out seven years later.
Directed, co-written, produced by and starring Serious, this movie has him playing Roger Crumpkin, who works in an egg factory and has learned that his boss is putting nicotine in the eggs. He also is in love with the UFO-loving Sunday Valentine (Helen Dallimore), who has found a rock shaped like a VW hubcap that she is sure came from another world. There’s also Roger’s roommate Lyndon (Grant Piro) and boss Duxton Chevalier (David Field), who is the evilldoer in this and yes, once dated Sunday and wants her back.
Serious’ films are very slapstick and surreal, but there are moments where it feels like the joke won’t land and then it doesn’t. They’re strange, however, and kind of endearing, even if they feel way more dated than 25 years old. It is kind of amazing that at one point, however, he was a hot item and able to take a movie all the way around the world before being nearly forgotten everywhere but where he came from.
Sadly, today Serious is 71, was kicked out of his apartment and hasn’t made a movie since this one. He’s pretty much faded away with random sightings being covered in Australia’s newspapers. His website is still up, but looks like it hasn’t been updated since 2003. He also tried to sue Yahoo in 2000 because they took his name. He lost that.
EDITOR’S NOTE: The Thing With Two Heads was on the CBS Late Movie on August 30, 1974.
Dr. Maxwell Kirshner (Ray Milland) knows that he’s dying but that’s why he’s getting his team of surgeons to do head transplants with gorillas, He’s running out of time and Dr. Philip Desmond (Roger Perry) has hired a black doctor — Dr. Phillip Desmond (Don Marshall) — and Kirshner shows off that he’s totally racist.
The plan has been to have criminals on death row to think they’re going to the chair and instead give their bodies up to be used by Desmond. Imagine his surprise when his death comes faster than he expected and he ends up having his head transplanted onto the same body of innocent man Jack Moss (Rosey Grier). Imagine Jack’s wife Lila’s (Chelsea Brown) surprise when he shows up with an old white man ‘s head on his shoulders.
Coming out a year after The Incredible 2-Headed Transplant, this has a man punching his other head in the face and an old racist’s severed head hooked up to a heart and lung machine. So there’s that.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Battle Beneath the Earth was on the CBS Late Movie on May 1 and September 26, 1972 and December 21, 1973.
Scientist Arnold Kramer (Peter Arne) really does think if you dig deep enough you’ll make your way to China. He thinks that Chinese General Chan Lu (Martin Benson, not Asian, but Russian/Polish; he was famously in The King and I, playing the gangster who Oddjob kills in Goldfinger and was also Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz on the British TV version of The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy) is planting nuclear bombs under the United States but no one believes him. They put him in a mental hospital before Navy Commander Jonathan Shaw (Kerwin Mathews) comes to meet him and reveals that he thinks its true; they head down into tunnels built into Hawaii and go to war.
The last movie directed by Montgomery Tully (The Terrornauts), this was written by Charles F. Vetter.
A bad guy with a falcon, everyone with a British accent and Ken Jones did a great jazz score. Those are the best things I can say for thio, other than if you have to be in a hospital, make sure its one that has slot machines.
July 7-13 Teen Movie Hell Week: From the book description on the Bazillion Points website: All-seeing author Mike “McBeardo” McPadden (Heavy Metal Movies) passes righteous judgment over the entire (teen movie) genre, one boobs-and-boner opus at a time. In more than 350 reviews and sidebars, Teen Movie Hell lays the crucible of coming-of-age comedies bare, from party-hearty farces such as The Pom-Pom Girls, Up the Creek, and Fraternity Vacation to the extreme insanity exploding all over King Frat, Screwballs, The Party Animal, and Surf II: The End of the Trilogy.
Zapped is not a feel-good movie, especially as we realize that Scott Baio and Willie Aames grew up to be right-wing and super religious, respectively. Here, they turn the act of getting mental powers into the chance to torment people, and if not sexually harass, then outright sexually molest women.
Barney Springboro (Baio) wants to do scientific experiments. Peyton Nichols (Aames) wants to ball, starting with school administrator Connie Updike (Hilary Beane). Peyton is asked by yearbook editor Bernadette (Felice Schachter) to take pictures of Barney in front of his GMO orchids — again, evil — an accident causes the mice food to be ingested as a gas, and Barney gets the telekinesis, the ability to move things with his mind.
Everyone has a crush on Jane Mitchell (Heather Thomas), who has a college boyfriend, so when she crushes Barney’s dreams again, he’s able to rip the buttons off her top and show off her bra, which is a crime. He also torments his mother (Marya Small) with a ventriloquist dummy that he can control. Is he the Carrieof this or the bullies who abused her?
More crimes: Causing Jane’s college guy, Robert Wolcott (Greg Bradford), to lose a drinking contest, and then Peyton seducing her, taking photos of her with a hidden camera that he sells at graduation. There’s also Barney scaring away two priests by pulling off Exorcist ripoff tricks.
Principal Walter J. Coolidge (Robert Mandan, Chester Tate on Soap) ends up having public sex with another older person, Rose Burnhart (Sue Ane Langdon, the only actor to return for Zapped Again!), and Scatman Crothers, Eddie Deezen and LaWanda Page all show up.
There wasn’t enough nudity in this, so supposedly they sent the crew back to shoot more nude scenes. The filmmakers used a body-double for Heather Thomas’ nude scenes, but she filed a complaint when they pasted her head on another nude actress. That’s why there’s a disclaimer that says, “A double was used for Miss Thomas in her nude scene and in the photograph.”
Jewel Shepard, a girl in a car in this, had no such complaints after Barney’s mental male gaze power tore her top off.
As if that wasn’t sad enough, Felice Schachter skipped her prom to film the prom scene.
This was directed by Robert J. Rosenthal, who wrote The Pom-Pom Girls, The Vanand Malibu Beach, which he also directed. He co-wrote this movie with Bruce Rubin, who also wrote Blood Rage.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Hound of the Baskervilles was on the CBS Late Movie on Septeber 25, 1974 and December 14, 1976.
Director Barry Crain wasn’t just a TV director. He was also a bridge champion, an ACBL Grand Life Master that won so many points that whoever gets the most points in a year wins a title named for him.
Writer Robert E. Thompson was writing for TV as early as 1956. He also wrote the script for They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?
Using old horror movie sets, this film had Stewart Granger as Sherlock Holmes and Bernard Fox as Dr. Watson. As for the Sir Hugo Baskerville, William Shatner is ready to be Shatner.
This was intended to be part of a revolving door series of literary detectives, as they also made The Adventures of Nick Carter starring Robert Conrad and A Very Missing Person with Eve Arden as Hildegarde Withers. Ratings and reviews were not kind.
The real mystery? On July 5, 1985, Crane was “found bludgeoned shortly before 3 P.M. in the garage of his luxury town home in Studio City.” He had been attacked with a large ceramic statue and strangled with a telephone cord before being found naked and covered in bedsheets. It took 34 years for the killer to be found, as a fingerprint led to Edwin Jerry Hiatt pleading guilty to voluntary manslaughter in 2019, saying “Anything’s possible back then. I was big into drugs.”
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