Roadshow Rarities (June 30 – July 6) In the old days of theatrical releases some of the more lavish movies would be promoted by holding limited screenings in large cities. These roadshow releases would generate hype before the nationwide release and allow producers to tweak the film to the audience’s reaction. This model also worked for low budget productions that may have had no intention of a wide release. These explo roadshows traveled an informal circuit of theaters, churches, revival tents, high school auditoriums and anywhere else they could run a projector. They frequently promised more than they delivered and left town before the angry audience could catch up to them. Through the restoration efforts of SWV many of these movies have survived to piss audiences off to this very day!

According to the Hash, Marihuana & Hemp Museum of Amsterdam and Barcelona, “On September 1, 1948, LA police entered the luxurious home of actress Lila Leeds, investigating an alleged “marijuana party.” Along with her roommate Vicki Evans, actor Robert Mitchum and his friend Robin Ford, the young actress was arrested for marijuana possession. At the time, this was a felony in California. They were released from jail after posting bail of $ 1,000 each, but Lila Leeds’s life had changed forever. After her release, the only acting job she could get in Hollywood was the role of a ‘stoner girl’ in the movie She Shoulda Said No!”

Also known as The Devil’s Weed and Wild Weed, it’s based on her life. It was originally distributed by Eureka Productions who lost money and sold it to Kroger Babb. He originally tried the title The Story of Lila Leeds and Her Exposé of the Marijuana Racket, but that didn’t do well. Babb never gave up and re-released it as She Should Said No. With the tagline, “How Bad Can a Good Girl Get… without losing her virtue or respect???” and telling local governments that this movie was made under the orders of the United States Treasury Department.

The final reel even thanks the government for their help — they gave none — saying that the producers “publicly acknowledge the splendid cooperation of the Nation’s narcotic experts and Government departments, who aided in various ways the success of this production…. If its presentation saves but one young girl or boy from becoming a dope fiend – then its story has been well told.”

Babb also booked Leeds to show up with the film, which I can only assume made the midnight showings a bigger deal.

She plays Anne Lester, who is trying to raise money to put her brother Bob (David Holt) through school. This means that when she meets the drug dealer Markey (Alan Baxter) she easily falls for marijuana and promiscuity. When her brother discovers what his sister is doing, he hangs himself and she goes to jail. Drugs are bad!

Jack Elam is in this, as is Leo Gorcey’s brother David. There’s also Lyle Talbot, who never turned down a role and was one of the first actors to play Superman’s arch enemy Lex Luthor.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Roadshow Rarities (June 30 – July 6) In the old days of theatrical releases some of the more lavish movies would be promoted by holding limited screenings in large cities. These roadshow releases would generate hype before the nationwide release and allow producers to tweak the film to the audience’s reaction. This model also worked for low budget productions that may have had no intention of a wide release. These explo roadshows traveled an informal circuit of theaters, churches, revival tents, high school auditoriums and anywhere else they could run a projector. They frequently promised more than they delivered and left town before the angry audience could catch up to them. Through the restoration efforts of SWV many of these movies have survived to piss audiences off to this very day!

Phil Tucker followed up Robot Monster with this, a movie written by and starring Lenny Bruce. It’s also yet another film featuring Timothy Farrell as Umberto Scalli, scumbag nightclub owner. It also has his wife, Honey Bruce Friedman, who knows all about criminal businesses, as her mother Mabel married a strict Catholic stepfather who also ran an illegal business from their attic. She also used to have a dance routine based on Bride of Frankenstein. Not only that but Bruce’s mother Sally Marr also shows up to dance. She was also in The Seven Minutes, Mansion of the Doomed and Dracula’s Dog.

Lenny is Vincent, the henchman for Scalli, who kills a sailor over some diamonds. Jess Franco would love that. The cops get involved and look into Scalli’s club where women charge a dime a dance.

Producer George Weiss was the producer of this and so many other movies that damaged the morality of our country. They include Olga’s House of Shame, Glen or Glenda, White Slaves of Chinatown, Racket Girls, Test Tube Babies and The Devil’s Sleep. We owe him so much.

This was all shot on one set and it looks as beaten down as the characters. Speaking of characters, the other henchman is “Killer” Joe Piro, who also choreographed Mad Monster Party. He was a retired computer programmer who was the top dance teacher on the New York City disco scene at the Peppermint Lounge. He taught Jacqueline Kennedy how to dance and remained a disco regular until his death in 1983, but not before an album was released with his name on it, Killer Joe’s International Discotheque.e.

Also: That’s Buster Keaton’s brother Harry in this. He was also in The Sinister Urge, The Violent Years, King Kong and The Art of Burlesqu

You can watch this on Tubi.

Roadshow Rarities (June 30 – July 6) In the old days of theatrical releases some of the more lavish movies would be promoted by holding limited screenings in large cities. These roadshow releases would generate hype before the nationwide release and allow producers to tweak the film to the audience’s reaction. This model also worked for low budget productions that may have had no intention of a wide release. These explo roadshows traveled an informal circuit of theaters, churches, revival tents, high school auditoriums and anywhere else they could run a projector. They frequently promised more than they delivered and left town before the angry audience could catch up to them. Through the restoration efforts of SWV many of these movies have survived to piss audiences off to this very day!

Somehow, this West German movie originally called The Doctor Speaks Out (Der Arzt stellt fest…) played to American audiences as The Wages of Sin and The Price of Sin. Sure, in its native country it was a mediation on abortion, but over here, it was a chance to see a woman fully nude. Never mind that she was having a baby at the time.

Being that this played the grindhouse circuit, it also came complete with a not-real doctor discussing the miracle of birth and then, yes, showing more babies come out into the world in shocking detail.

Those moments are on the Something Weird blu ray re-release that Kino Lorber has just put out. You also get a second movie, The Misery and Fortune of Women, audio commentary by film historian Alexandra Heller-Nicholas a medical lecture and book pitch by Donn Davison, who released this movie in America and two baby birthing films, Life and Its Secrecies and Triplets by Cesarean Section.

What an astounding time for movies. And just think — you can have this on your shelf, just like I do, when someone is at your house and wonders, “You know, I’ve always wanted to see triplets get cut out of a human being.”

Roadshow Rarities (June 30 – July 6) In the old days of theatrical releases some of the more lavish movies would be promoted by holding limited screenings in large cities. These roadshow releases would generate hype before the nationwide release and allow producers to tweak the film to the audience’s reaction. This model also worked for low budget productions that may have had no intention of a wide release. These explo roadshows traveled an informal circuit of theaters, churches, revival tents, high school auditoriums and anywhere else they could run a projector. They frequently promised more than they delivered and left town before the angry audience could catch up to them. Through the restoration efforts of SWV many of these movies have survived to piss audiences off to this very day!

Sally and Bob have been married a year and there’s some good news. It seems like she’s pregnant. That means they go to see Dr. West, who has no idea what HiPPA laws are or the privacy of the patient and we learn about how Sally had a baby with Bob’s best friend who died in World War II and their issues with VD and when things get weird, he makes them watch some other movies within the movie like The Story of V.D., The Story of Reproduction and The Story of Life and oh man, throw away your popcorn because you know it’s time to see diseased vaginas and penises. Let’s throw in a cesarian and regular birth, because the people demand it!

After the movie, perhaps you’d like to purchase The Mid-Century Marriage Guide?

Director Howard Bretherton made a hundred or so low budget westerns and was a master of editing in camera, a skill he passed on to his son David Bretherton, who edited Cabaret and Westworld, and his granddaughter Gillian L. Hutshing, who was on the editing team for Blade Runner, Rad, Eyes of Fire and The Monster Squad.

Roadshow Rarities (June 30 – July 6) In the old days of theatrical releases some of the more lavish movies would be promoted by holding limited screenings in large cities. These roadshow releases would generate hype before the nationwide release and allow producers to tweak the film to the audience’s reaction. This model also worked for low budget productions that may have had no intention of a wide release. These explo roadshows traveled an informal circuit of theaters, churches, revival tents, high school auditoriums and anywhere else they could run a projector. They frequently promised more than they delivered and left town before the angry audience could catch up to them. Through the restoration efforts of SWV many of these movies have survived to piss audiences off to this very day!

Directed by W. Merle Connell (The Flesh Merchant) and written by Danny Arnold (who created Barney Miller) and Richard S. McMahan, this uses the same cast and crew as Test Tube Babies.

Actor Timothy Farrell made three low-budget exploitation movies in which he played the part of gym owner Umberto Scalli. These films are also all about women wrestlers, such as Racket Girls, Dance Hall Racket and this movie. Scalli may have died at the end of Racket Girls but he came back to life for the other movie.

Scalli is out of prison and has two new scams. One is a health spa where women can get dangerous diet drugs and the other one is to sell amphetamines to teenagers at parties. Judge Rosalind Ballentine (Lita Grey, the second wife of Charlie Chaplin) and Detective Sergeant Dave Kerrigan (William Thomason) try to stop him, but he has photos of the judge’s daughter Margie (Tracy Lynne) nude and drugged out at one of those parties.

“Today’s Moral MENACE ! Daring expose of the devil drug traffic in Bennies, Goofies and Phenos as it really exists.”

Oh it does. This movie was probably really scandalous in 1949 but today, it’s nearly quaint.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Uschi Digard week (June 23 – 29) Digard is best known for her work with Russ Meyer but she became an SWV fan favorite for two gargantuan reasons, her charm and her prolific career. The Swiss actress fled to America in 1968 and began a long career filling the silver screen from corner to corner with her overflowing positive energy. Show the lady some respect and watch one of her movies.

A section 3 video nasty and a production of Harry Novak, this movie should come complete with soap so that you can clean yourself up after the way you feel post-watch. But hey, before we luxuriate in filth, let’s talk about Harry and Boxoffice International Pictures.

Just take a cursory scan through some of the films that Boxoffice brought to the eyes of maniacs like you and me: Kiss Me Quick! in which an alien comes to our planet in search of feminine breeding stock*, the spectacularly named mondo  Suburban Pagans, the drinking suburban housewives and their pot-smoking daughters in The Muthers, Jean Rollin’s The Nude Vampire, the Gary Graver-directed Erika’s Hot Summer, redneck trash (a good thing) like Country Cuzzins and Sweet Georgia, the brutal and wonderful Toys Are Not for Children, The Sinful Dwarf, Frankenstein’s Castle of Freaks, Lisa, Rattlers, The Child and so many more. When I first started buying trailer collections, the Something Weird Extra Weird Sampler was where I first saw Harry’s signature swirl onto my screen and then blow my mind with the aberrant junk that he was fostering on the movie buying public.

The actual story of this movie isn’t really a story as much as it’s an opportunity to get single women one handing it and couplings two handing it. So yeah, Ralph has taken Donna to see his crazy uncle again, but first she has to see her man in the boat before putting on a scene before the somehow dead and yet able to speak from beyond the grave uncle. And then this movie makes me wonder, who is this for? Who wants to see fellatio interrupted by stabbing or Uschi Digard have sex with — not in — a bed** or a necrophilia scene that ends with a pitchfork murder? Someone, I guess. As Harry Novak himself once said, “When I was a kid, my Daddy told me, “There’s a buyer for everything.” And I lived to find out that he was right.”

But if you make it through all that freaky 70s not so sexy sex, well, you learn the truth. The fact that Donna is really the uncle who is really an alien who sells human brains as drugs on the planet Arkon and the gifts promised from the toy box are really death as we watch a whole bunch of hippies get trapped inside a death house.

Director and writer Ronald Víctor García started out as an electro-mechanical packaging designer for the Apollo Command Module, the Saturn Stage II Helium Purge System and the Polaris Atomic Submarine Launching Systems before making movies like this. And somehow, some way, he became the director of photography for Twin Peaks and One from the Heart. In fact, he’s still out there today, working as a cinematographer on The Good Fight.

I wouldn’t say that this movie was good, but I will say that I was pretty messed up in a good way by it. It has a great movie somewhere in there and I wished that they had found it.

*Harry had a thing for sexy aliens, producing one of my favorite named movies of all time, 1975’s Wham! Bam! Thank You, Spaceman!

**To be fair, I am a red-blooded male and I am willing to watch Uschi Digard do pretty much whatever she wants to do.

Uschi Digard week (June 23 – 29) Digard is best known for her work with Russ Meyer but she became an SWV fan favorite for two gargantuan reasons, her charm and her prolific career. The Swiss actress fled to America in 1968 and began a long career filling the silver screen from corner to corner with her overflowing positive energy. Show the lady some respect and watch one of her movies.

This is not about the one with the silver balls, yet I remain obsessed about the idea that when people are fucking the Lady In Lavender in Phantasm, they’re fucking the Tall Man.

No, this is the adult movie from Down Under directed by the man that would one day make Psycho II, Richard Franklin. He used the name Richard Bruce, but it’s the same talented man who made Roadgames and Cloak and Dagger.

German sexologist Professor Jürgen Notafreud (John Bluthal) is here to explain to us how the female sexual mind works. To do so, we’re going to watch an anthology film of sexual hijinks, kind of like an Amicus movie but you know, with fucking.

There are many tales here, like the woman who is being pampered in a “Beauty Parlour,” a husband (William Margold) and wife (Maria Arnold, who is in the best titled of all Harry Novak’s movies, Wam Bam Thank You Spaceman) playing a “Card Game” where she takes on as many of his friends (Kirby Hall and Robert Savage) as she can (and then Wendy Cavanaugh and Helen O’Connell also come over), “Wearing The Pants” has a housewife (Gretchen Gayle, My Body Hungers) do some forced feminization and sodomy on a man (Con Covert) who steals her clothing and “Nightmare Alley,” which has Rene Bond being assaulted by Al Williams until she likes it.

Umm…it was 1976? No, I can’t defend it.

At least this recovers with “The Girls,” as Uschi Digard — listed as Super Girl, as if she was coming in from a Russ Meyer movie — and Mara Lutra engaging in some sapphic screentime. Then, the film’s most famous moment has John Holmes rise from the water nude — yes, it’s still intimidating — and eat “Fruit Salad” off of Maria Welton.

Fantasm seems to be about displaying taboos, like how Candy Samples lusts for her son (Gene Poe) in “Mother’s Darling” and a black exotic dancer (Shayne) performs for Richard Partlow, Paul Wyman and Sam Wyman. Or “After School,” where young Roxanne Brewer (Sexual Kung Fu in Hong Kong and Dr. Dildo’s Secret; spoiler warning; the doctor is a dildo) dances for her teacher (Al Ward) until he has a heart attack. Guess that test is cancelled tomorrow.

Finally, in the scene that you knew I’d like most, a “Blood Orgy” finds Serena get sacrificed by a Satanic cult, but not before making love to their priest (Clement von Franckenstein, whose father Sir George Franckenstein was the Austrian Ambassador to the Court of St. James).

It’s like Faces of Death but, you know, about boinking.

Also: John Holmes’ name is Neptune and at one point, it seems like his underwater lover is using his massive membrum virile as a snorkel.

I would assume that Brockton O’Toole got his inspiration from this movie. And if you got that, you definitely walked through some video store curtains.

Uschi Digard week (June 23 – 29) Digard is best known for her work with Russ Meyer but she became an SWV fan favorite for two gargantuan reasons, her charm and her prolific career. The Swiss actress fled to America in 1968 and began a long career filling the silver screen from corner to corner with her overflowing positive energy. Show the lady some respect and watch one of her movies.

Long thought to either be a lost film or only having a single print still in existence that was in German with no subtitles, this movie supposedly lives as a 35mm print in the library of Quentin Tarantino.

Directed and written by Albert Zugsmith (Movie Star, American Style or; LSD, I Hate You; The Chinese Room and one of the worst movies ever made, Dondi) — who used the name Kentucky Jones so that the real Manson Family wouldn’t creepy crawl his house — this was also known as Together Girls, House of Bondage and the best possible exploitation title possible, The Manson Massacre.

Invar (Makee K. Blaisdell, who had played many Native Americans on TV) is our Manson. He spends much of the film sleeping in a coffin and having flashbacks, like how he used to have sex with his mom, who is played by Uschi Digard. He also killed his dad with a chair.

This is the kind of movie whose legends are better than the reality, like the one that Lee Frost directed it or that it was made by the Mansons. That said, cinematographer Robert Maxwell also worked on the adult movie The Ramrodder that was shot at Spahn Ranch and had Bobby Beausoleil and Catherine Share in the cast. So maybe sometimes, the lie is based in real life.

The cast includes Debbie Osborne (The Toy Box), April 1972 Playboy Playmate of the Month Vicki Peters (Blood Mania), Lindis Guinness (Grave of the Vampire) and James Whitworth, Jupiter from The Hills Have Eyes.

I wish that I could tell you that this was an amazing piece of adult film but no. It certainly isn’t. It does, however, have a scene where a baby is tossed into a dumpster.

Uschi Digard week (June 23 – 29) Digard is best known for her work with Russ Meyer but she became an SWV fan favorite for two gargantuan reasons, her charm and her prolific career. The Swiss actress fled to America in 1968 and began a long career filling the silver screen from corner to corner with her overflowing positive energy. Show the lady some respect and watch one of her movies.

Every Russ Meyer movie I haven’t seen before becomes my favorite of his movies.

Co-written by Roger Ebert, this feels like Our Town but with so much sex. We meet everyone in this small town, clothed and unclothed.

There’s radio evangelist Eufaula Roop (Ann Marie, who was in the last Meyer movie that became my favorite, Supervixens), who is first shown mounting Martin Bormann (Henry Rowland, Otto from Beyond the Valley of the Dolls and also Bormann in Supervixens; I find it amusing that Meyer both shot war footage as part of the 166th Signal Photographic Company, the official photo unit in General Patton’s Third Army during the Second World War*, and named a major character in his movies — twice — after the private secretary to Adolf Hitler) inside a coffin. We also see a salesman going door to door, making love to every wife in town, starting with one played by Candy Samples (she’s listed in the credits as The Very Big Blonde and lives up to that; her adult career lasted from 1970 to 1989). And oh yes, there’s Junkyard Sal (June Mack), who sleeps with the men she orders around in her scrap heap.

Our hero, if there is one, is Lamar Shedd (Ken Kerr, who not only was Fred in Up!, but was the assistant director on Roar and a grip on Eaten Alive; that isn’t a pun), who is on again and off again with his wife Lavonia (Kitten Natividad, a former maid for Stella Stevens and the star of many an adult film up until 2011; she’s also in Airplane and The Tomb). Either she’s trying to get in his pants while he’s trying to study or he’s trying to go into the tradesman’s entrance. Congratulations! If you didn’t have to look that up, you’re also a pervert.

Lamar goes to work at the junkyard, while his wife nearly drowns and sexually assaults a fourteen-year-old boy named Rhett (Steve Tracy, whose career and short life found him in eleven episodes of Little House On the Prairie, as well as the Tom DeSimone-directed gay porn movie Heavy Equipment). Then, she finds that salesman and balls him too.

As for Lamar, he’s trapped by his boss and forced to please her while his co-workers watch from outside. He’s desperate, as he’s trying to better himself with an education. It ends up with everyone being fired and Lamar heading for a strip club where he’s slipped a mickey by Mexican exotic dancer — meter algo en la bebida de loc — Lola Langusta, who ends up being his wife.  They fight again, she sleeps with a truck driver and he returns home in time to fight the guy. She saves him by burning his ballsack with a lightbulb. Yes, really.

In an attempt to make things work, the couple visits dentist/marriage counselor Asa Lavender (Robert Pearson, Claws). It ends up with Lamar sleeping with nurse Flovilla Hatch (Pittsburgh adoptee Sharon Hill, who was an actual nurse in town before playing one of the lead zombies in Dawn of the Dead; she also appears in Knightriders and has done location casting for lots of Steel City shot films, like Rappin’, Gung Ho and Lady Beware), the nurse sleeping with Lavonia and the dentist trying to have his way with Lamar. After this, Lamar decides to find God, which means that Eufaula Roop  baptizes him and nearly drowns him as she mounts him. Lamar leaves, finds the truck driver Mr. Peterbuilt (Patrick Wright, who was also a truck driver in Graduation Day) in bed with his wife again, knocks him out and finally makes love to his bride.

Meanwhile, Zebulon (DeForest Covan) crushes everyone in the junkyard and takes it over, Eufaula makes love to Rhett, who goes home and makes love to his father Martin Bormann’s wife SuperSoul. Yes, Uschi Digard, playing the same role she had in Supervixens. As narrator Stuart Lancaster closes his words, we see Russ Meyer filming in the distance and Digard’s lovemaking powers cause an earthquake.

This was Meyer’s last movie until he would return in the 2000s to make Russ Meyer’s Pandora Peaks and the Playboy video Voluptuous Vixens II.

By the 80s, breasts could be surgically made to create the woman that Meyer loved most. Hardcore pornography had taken over for softcore. So Meyer retired a wealthy man. He owned the rights to nearly all of his films and made millions reselling his films on home video, working out of his home. If you called the phone number in ads to buy one, you were probably talking to him.

His grave says, “King of the nudies. I was glad to do it.”

You can download this on the Internet Archive.

*Meyer was given to carny flimflam — which is the best kind — and claimed to have seen soldiers in a stockade being trained for a suicide mission during the war, then told  E. M. Nathanson who wrote The Dirty Dozen, which Meyer was given 10% of. He was also part of a team that planned on assassinating Hitler and Jospeh Goebbels, with Meyer supposedly shooting the evidence of the leader’s death. He also lost his virginity to a girl named Babette — I imagine she had the kind of breasts that eclipse the sky — that was paid for by Ernest Hemingway. I’ve also heard Meyer shot the flag raising at Iwo Jima, but there’s no way all of these things can be true.

Uschi Digard week (June 23 – 29) Digard is best known for her work with Russ Meyer but she became an SWV fan favorite for two gargantuan reasons, her charm and her prolific career. The Swiss actress fled to America in 1968 and began a long career filling the silver screen from corner to corner with her overflowing positive energy. Show the lady some respect and watch one of her movies.

Stu Seagall created hyper-realistic training for military personnel and also directed Insatiable with Marilyn Chambers. How can you top that? He was the executive producer for Silk Stalkings, Renegade and the third Beastmaster movie. And more? He directed, wrote and produced Drive-In Massacre, which this was shot back-to-back with.

He also directed this movie, which was written by John Alderman, John F. Goff and Martin Gatsby. It’s about a couple named Dancer (John Alderman) and Scuzz (Jacqueline Giroux) who are the pimps for three women known as the C.B. Hustlers, who are played by Janus Blythe (Ruby from The Hills Have Eyes), Catherine Barkley and — most importantly — Uschi Digard, billed as Elke Vann. They always tell people in public that the girls are their daughters, but the truth is that they collect 40% of their $25 fee for each sex act, which they set up with C.B. radios.

In C.B. terms, they used to call the areas where sex workers would line up as pickle park, party row or the back row.

Sheriff Elrod P. Ramsey (Bruce Kimball) wants to bust the girls, so he brings on newspaper men Boots Clayborn (John F. Goff) and Mountain Dean (Richard Kennedy) to track them down. Of course, Boots falls for one of the girls and ends up helping them stay ahead of the fuzz. Or as C.B. users would say, bears driving bubble gum machines. Or a smokey. Or, if they’re women, Mama Bears.

It’s also a vansploitation movie! The Hot Box 1 and Hot Box 2 vans were made by Custom Touch of Van Nuys, California.

There’s one major reason — well, two — to watch this and that’s Uschi Digard, whose lovemaking scene is filmed as if you are under her. It’s worth sitting through all the bad country music, long walking scenes and the dumb plot, because I often wonder if God exists and upon rewatching this scene more than once, I can confirm that the answer is affirmative.