69 EsSINtial SWV Titles (September 15 – 21): Klon, who came up with this list, said “This isn’t the 69 BEST SWV movies, it isn’t my 69 FAVORITE SWV movies, my goal was to highlight 69 of the MOST SWV movies.” You can see the whole list here, including some of the ones I’ve already posted.

Using some of the same sets from Hercules and the Conquest of Atlantis, Mario Bava (Blood and Black Lace, Black Sunday) created a masterpiece with this film. Featuring Reg Park (who appeared in four Hercules films and was considered a mentor to Arnold Schwarzenegger) and Christopher Lee (The Satanic Rites of Dracula, The Wicker Man, everything good and right about horror movies), this would influence every sword and sandal movie that would follow, as well as films like Flash Gordon.

Despite the size of the budget and the cheapness of the sets, Bava crafts a totally unique world, filled with rich colors and billowing smoke. And with Lee as King Lico, there’s finally a villain that feels worthy of Hercules’ bold heroics.

As Hercules returns from many adventures, he discovers that the love of his life, Princess Deianira, has lost her memory. Unbeknownst to him, Lico is responsible. Working with the forces of the underworld, he wants her for himself (and Hercules out of the way). He sends Hercules, Theseus and Telemachus on a suicide mission to steal the Stone of Forgetfulness from a small island within a lake of fire. For love, Hercules will dare anything, diving headfirst into what normal men fear.

Indulge me in hyperbole for a moment, but Bava could be seen as very much the same. He made a bet with himself on this film, “attempting to shoot it with one segmented wall containing doors and windows and four movable columns.” Facing down a challenge and attempting to outdo the past Steve Reeves Hercules films while crafting a visual style all his own — Bava exceeds expectations here.

To me, the heart of the film is the differences between Hercules and Theseus. Hercules is driven by duty, devotion and love, while Theseus is addicted to new experiences, whether they be violent or sexual. When he is turned against Hercules, you know that our hero will forgive him, no matter what. His strength goes beyond physical — it extends to his heart.

There’s a scene in the film where the Queen of the Hesperides tells Hercules this advice: “Believe only what you do, not what you think you see.” That’s a perfect thought for this film. You may see fake rocks, silly costumes and a goofy plot. Or you can enjoy this film’s simple pleasures, wild colors and otherworldly feel.

There’s always a divide in how I see movies and how others do, which often leads me to not always want to share a film. Do you know what I mean? I honestly adore a film like Holy Mountain or The Beyond, but I know that by telling someone who isn’t willing to accept some of the faults, to simply see it as a dumb movie instead of a treasured story, I’m just going to get upset. This L.A. Weekly article sums it so well. Bava was operating on a small budget, with a small script, but delivered beyond measure. A story where one of the main characters must realize that in order to find true happiness for all, he must give up his own happiness? That’s deeper than the papier-mâché boulders and wooden performances here hint at.

Within the confines of what is expected, Bava is able to move us, to inspire us, to wow us, to take us to another, better world — one filled with smoke and lava and neon and beauty. We are limited now by the fact that every film must look perfect and clean and realistic. I’ll take one Hercules in the Haunted World over every movie that will play in moviehouses this year.

69 EsSINtial SWV Titles (September 15 – 21): Klon, who came up with this list, said “This isn’t the 69 BEST SWV movies, it isn’t my 69 FAVORITE SWV movies, my goal was to highlight 69 of the MOST SWV movies.” You can see the whole list here, including some of the ones I’ve already posted.

It takes a certain kind of genius — or maniac — to make a gore drenched version of Brigadoon. I was explaining this movie to someone and said that the main reason why I like it so much is the completely joyful way in which the townsfolk of Pleasant Valley go about their murderous rampage. This is the time of their lives — well, post-death lives — and it’s worth hollering and singing and shouting about.

Shot over two weeks in the small Florida town of St. Cloud — not yet a cog in the omnipotent wheel of the Disney vacation empire yet — and featuring the gleeful participation of nearly every citizen in that sleepy community, this movie established the danger of the South to North audiences, a theme that would reach its creative apex in Tobe Hooper’s The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

Yankee tourists, made up of the Millers, the Wells and unmarried folks Tom White and Terry Adams (Lewis’ muse, if he ever had one and only because he never sliced off one of her limbs or cut out her tongue, Connie Mason) have followed the detours to Pleasant Valley where they’re the guests of honor for the centennial celebration.

Yes, a hundred years ago, the Union troops marched through the town and killed every man, woman and child. What a thing to celebrate!

The town’s mayor, Joseph Buckman (Taalkeus Blank, who used the name Jeffery Allen, could do such a Southern accent that Lewis would also use him in Moonshine Mountain, This Stuff’ll Kill Ya! and Year of the Yahoo!), and the townspeople show everyone great hospitality at first, but before you can say Mason-Dixon Line they’re slicing off their guests body parts, drawing and quartering them, getting rolled down the hill in a nail-filled barrel, having rocks dropped on them and all other manner of grisly crowd pleasing hijinks.

After kidnapping little Billy, Terry and Tom make it out of town and come back with the police, only to discover that the town never existed. When they leave, the townspeople return and wonder what the world will be like when they come back in 2065 before disappearing into the fog.

This was Lewis’ favorites of his films and he even published a tie-in paperback version of the story.

Yes, that’s Herschell Gordon Lewis singing the theme song, too. You have to admire his dedication to filmmaking. This was produced by David F. Friedman, who met up with Kroger Babb before a career that has everything from nudie cuties and roughies to gore and Naziploitation, which he produced under the name Herman Traeger.

More movies should be like Two Thousand Maniacs!, but so few have the gumption to even try.

Here’s a drink.

Pleasant Valley Dew

• 4 oz. Mountain Dew
• 2 oz. moonshine
• ,5 oz. triple sec
• 2 oz. pineapple juice
• 2 oz. orange juice
• 2 oz. pomegranate juice

1. Pour it all in a shaker with ice and shake it like it’s a Yankee in a barrel.
2. Pour and savor all that booze.

You can watch Two Thousand Maniacs! on Tubi.

69 EsSINtial SWV Titles (September 15 – 21): Klon, who came up with this list, said “This isn’t the 69 BEST SWV movies, it isn’t my 69 FAVORITE SWV movies, my goal was to highlight 69 of the MOST SWV movies.” You can see the whole list here, including some of the ones I’ve already posted.

A couple of months ago, I was doing my usual weekend of looking at used DVD stores when I noticed an older man staring at the stacks of used movies. He stopped and asked, “Do you mind if I ask you what movies I should get?” It turns out that his wife had recently died and he missed watching horror movies with her and wanted to bring back some memories. He had no idea how streaming worked and had just gotten a DVD player, so as we continued talking, it turned out that he really liked Barbara Steele in movies and was surprised that he could own this film. It made me feel really great that I could help someone out like this as well as realize that Ms. Steele has been bewitching men of all ages all around the world for decades.

Mario Caiano has made movies across nearly every genre that an Italian director can work in, from peplum like Ulysses Against the Son of Hercules to westerns such as A Coffin for the Sheriff, giallo like Eye in the Labyrinth and berserk freakouts like Love Camp 7, The Fighting Fists of Shanghai Joe and the kinda giallo Ombre Roventi.

This is the kind of gothic madness that I love so much, starting with Stephen Arrowsmith (Paul Muller, Malenka) discovering his wife Muriel (Steele) having the gardener plant some seeds inside her. He shoves a hot poker in the man’s face, burns her with acid and then electrocutes both of them before removing their hearts and giving their blood to de-age his servant Solange (Helga Liné!). And then he finds out that he isn’t the heir to the castle — it turns out that Muriel has an identical sister named Jenny (also Steele) who is mentally deranged but will become his new bride.

I’m in. All in.

Stephen and Solange begin to gaslight Jenny but she has the ghosts of the dead lovers on her side, as well as Dr. Derek Joyce (Marino Masé, The Red Queen Kills Seven Times). This movie looks beyond beautiful and really allows Steele to showcase her acting skills (and her piercing eyes).

“If you’re gonna scream, scream with me,” sang Glenn Danzig in the Misfits’ “Hybrid Moments,” which was inspired by this movie. Nightmare Castle is everything great about black and white gothic melodrama and I just want to live within every frame of this film. It’s also the first horror score that Ennio Morricone would write.

You have so many choices to see this. For the easy way, just stream it on Tubi. Or you can do what I did and buy the Severin blu ray, which has commentary by Steele, an interview with Caiano and Castle of Blood and Terror Creatures from the Grave included.

69 EsSINtial SWV Titles (September 15 – 21): Klon, who came up with this list, said “This isn’t the 69 BEST SWV movies, it isn’t my 69 FAVORITE SWV movies, my goal was to highlight 69 of the MOST SWV movies.” You can see the whole list here, including some of the ones I’ve already posted.

William Girdler was born on October 22, 1947 in Jefferson County, KY and this was his first of nine movies in six years, ending only when he died while scouting locations in the Philippines for his next film.

After he finished with the Air Force, Girlder formed Studio One with best friend and brother-in-law J. Patrick Kelly. Initially focused on TV commercials, Studio One eventually took on movies with this film. It later became Mid-America Pictures when Girdler’s films began making money.

According to the official William Girdler site, his “make ’em fast and cheap” directorial style was the result of a premonition that he’d die by the age of 30. Well, he made it to thirty, at least. Some say that Girdler was so obsessed with his own death that he said that he was in a race against time.

Filmed in Louisville in late 1971 for around $50,000, this is the story of concert pianist Lucina Martin (Carla Borelli) who has been abducted by Dr. Jason Specter (Charles Kissinger) and taken to his Pleasant Hill Hospital for treatment. It’s a sanitarium that she swears that she doesn’t belong in and who would want to be in a place where the doctor kills people to add to his Satanic majesty and immortality? And is Specter also the evil sorceress Martine? Because Kissinger is definitely playing both parts. He was also a horror host in Louisville known as the Fearmonger on WDRB.

It all leads up to a virgin sacrifice with our lovely piano player as the victim and Martine saying things like the fact that she “calls upon the gates of the dark realm to crash asunder” and invokes “blazing angles of the shining trapezoid.” What’s that? Oh, you know, the Order of the Trapezoid which later became the governing body of the Church of Satan.

More of that in a bit.

This being the early 70s, the ending is ambiguous, the rubber bugs and snakes countless and a Satan that looks like someone wearing a costume from a party store. You know, it might sound like I’m laughing at this movie, but I’m not. Asylum of Satan pleases me to an incredible degree, a movie made by someone who knew he was born to make movies and yet trying all he could to learn right there on the screen.

Girlder told the Louisville Times, “Other people learned how to make movies in film schools. I learned by doing it. Nobody saw Billy Friedkin’s or Steven Spielberg’s mistakes, but all my mistakes were right up there on the screen for everybody to see.”

The film was made with the assistance of local investors but the movie didn’t make enough to return their investment. Shortly before his too soon death, Girdler signed over the rights to this movie and Three On a Meathook to those original investors so that they could make back their money.

The Girdler site also has an amazing interview with Don Wrege, who clapped the clapboard for this movie. I loved every word, especially when he explains how the Church of Satan got involved being technical consultants.

“A bunch of high school girls (some daughters of investors) were dressed in virginal white, given candles and positioned in a circle around Borelli who was roped to the alter. A guy in a rubber suit. (Girdler said the suit/mask was from Rosemary’s Baby but wasn’t shown in the film, thus it was affordable and available and, of course, cool.)

There was a lot of motion involved. I think the guy in the rubber suit was on an apple box with wheels. The Asmans were on the largest crane we used the whole time, if I remember correctly. Multiple takes were done, all the time Kissinger (I think) was reciting the invocations that had been written by the satanic guy who was standing in the wings watching all of this take place. The incantation, if that’s the right word, was repeated any number of times with as much sincerity as Charlie Kissinger could muster, as multiple takes were filmed.

During one take, and at some very convenient point in the “prayer,” like “…if you’re present, show yourself…” or something like that, one of the white-draped high school daughters of an investor passed out and hit the floor. Everyone was horrified. The two people from the Black Church without hesitation ran to the girl’s limp body and began saying all sorts of weird shit, speaking in some unidentifiable tongue. The girl’s mother, who was there, TOTALLY freaked out, running to her daughter’s side screaming “You leave her alone…get away!” to the two Satanists.

The daughter came to in a few moments, and was excused for the day. Everything was really tense for a couple of hours after that. I think some folks started to wonder what the hell we were messing with. I made a mental note to try to keep track of that girl who fainted, but I haven’t had the nerve. I really don’t want to know.”

Well, that advisor was Michael Aquino, the actual writer of a lot of the rituals in the Satanic Bible and he told the Girdler site that he didn’t remember anyone passing out. Aquino later broke away from the Church of Satan and formed the Temple of Set.

After receiving his PhD in political science from the University of California, Santa Barbara, Aquino worked as an adjunct professor at Golden Gate University until 1986. The whole time, he was serving as an Active Guard Reserve officer of the United States Army stationed at the Presidio of San Francisco.

As the 80s went on, Aquino became intrigued by the connections between Nazis and the occult. At one point, he performed a solitary rite at Walhalla beneath the Wewelsburg castle which was an infamous ceremonial space used by the Schutzstaffel’s Ahnenerbe group.

He then formed the Order of the Trapezoid, which was a chivalric order influenced by a mix of Satanism, Pagan heathery and even the application of runes within magic. Aquino was often challenged in the Satanic Panic of many crimes, as well as in conspiracy circles for numerous acts of evil as he started his career in PsyOps. He even welcomed LaVey’s daughter Zeena and her husband Nikolas Schreck into the group before the inevitable break.

But I digress, as I always say.

Girdler would do so much more — again, in such a short time — but the basics of his career are here. The 70s were prime time for Satanic movies and he took advantage of it just as he would of all manner of subjects that he thought would make box office.

He was even kind of William Castle in a way here, as the press book mentions ordering “Sign of Satan Soul Protectors” to protect theatergoers from the “Evil Stare of the Devil.” That’s also Girdler’s Porsche in this and his sister Lynne Kelly in the pool with the snakes, because Sherry Steiner refused.

Here’s a drink for this movie.

Snake in the Swimming Pool

• 2 oz. Southern Comfort
• 4 oz. cranberry juice
• 1 oz. lime juice

1. Build over ice, starting with the SoCo, then followed by the cranberry and lemon.

69 EsSINtial SWV Titles (September 15 – 21): Klon, who came up with this list, said “This isn’t the 69 BEST SWV movies, it isn’t my 69 FAVORITE SWV movies, my goal was to highlight 69 of the MOST SWV movies.” You can see the whole list here, including some of the ones I’ve already posted.

Released as Forbidden Fruit: The Golden Age of Exploitation Pictures, Vol. 9 as part of the Something Weird/Kino Classics line, The Lash of the Penitentes is an astounding bit of before your grandparents exploitation sleaze, a report on a murder within the hidden non-English speaking New Mexican cult of Catholic masochists known as Los Hermanos Penitentes.

Hey, happy easter a few days late, because these guys and ladies went absolutely wild during Lent, basically whipping the sin out of themselves before crucifying for real one of the lucky ones of their close-knit group.

69 EsSINtial SWV Titles (September 15 – 21): Klon, who came up with this list, said “This isn’t the 69 BEST SWV movies, it isn’t my 69 FAVORITE SWV movies, my goal was to highlight 69 of the MOST SWV movies.” You can see the whole list here, including some of the ones I’ve already posted.

Vapors was Andy Milligan’s first official film. It was first released as an underground gay film in selected art houses in 1965 and to the general public in 1967. Today, it could really play anywhere, not in adults only theaters.

Directed by Milligan and written by Hope Stansbury, all of the interior shots were filmed in a vacant apartment floor on 199 Prince Street in Manhattan, the same apartment building where Milligan lived. The clerk scene was shot in a candy store and the opening exterior shot of the bathhouse was filmed outside the actual St. Marks Bathhouse on 6 St. Marks Place in the East Village, a location famous at the time for hookups when gay sex was illegal in New York City. Keep in mind this was just over fifty years ago.

The entire movie takes place inside the St. Marks Baths, as a young man named Thomas sits on a bed and observes the other men and their personalities. He’s joined by an older man named Mr. Jaffe  They get pasty their opening lies — Thomas is not a frequent visitor, Jaffe is not a first-timer — and begin to discuss their lives. Jaffe has been married for 19 years and wants nothing to do with his wife any longer. Sixteen years ago, their son drowned and life has never been the same. He sees something of his son in Thomas and has to leave, but promises to send him a gift. The loudness of the baths continues as a paper sunflower arrives for Thomas, who cries upon Mr. Thomas leaving, but is soon greeted by another man who disrobes for anonymous sex with the young man.

This movie feels like a place that I am invading and not just because I am a heterosexual. It’s because Milligan has so completely created a privacy between these two men that only they should share and we’re just as bad as that peeping tom looking through a hole in the wall. It’s fascinating to see this movie, one free from murder and the supernatural, and see where Milligan’s movies went after this.

You can watch this on YouTube.

69 EsSINtial SWV Titles (September 15 – 21): Klon, who came up with this list, said “This isn’t the 69 BEST SWV movies, it isn’t my 69 FAVORITE SWV movies, my goal was to highlight 69 of the MOST SWV movies.” You can see the whole list here, including some of the ones I’ve already posted.

“I’m trisexual — I’ll try anything for pleasure!”

Any movie that has this line, no matter what happens in it, has something good in it.

Norman (Gerald Jaccuzo) is The Duke Of Norwich. When his half-brother is killed, he gets closer to the throne, which makes him filled with a need for power. He sets his other half-brother Albert (Hal Borske) up with a commoner named Heather MacGregor (Susan Cassidy) with plans to take control of their child and therefore, the throne. But there’s also the dead half-brother’s pregnant wife Lady Jane (Patricia Dillon), a hunchback named Ivan (Richard Mason) — who even gets into a threesome — and a woman with one eye.

I can’t even imagine what people unaware of Andy Milligan think when they saw this. It could still be happening now thanks to streaming, as someone sees the poster art and the title and thinks. “I’ll try this” before they’re confronted by Staten Island being a foreign country and costumes that look like they came from a Christmas play. Will any of them make it to the end? Or will they just be upset by what they have seen?

You can watch this on Tubi.

69 EsSINtial SWV Titles (September 15 – 21): Klon, who came up with this list, said “This isn’t the 69 BEST SWV movies, it isn’t my 69 FAVORITE SWV movies, my goal was to highlight 69 of the MOST SWV movies.” You can see the whole list here, including some of the ones I’ve already posted.

La venganza del sexo (Revenge of Sex) was released by Forbes-Unistar in the U.S. with the amazing title of The Curious Dr. Humpp.

Dr. Humpp (Dr. Zoide in the original, played by Aldo Barbero and wearing a wild outfit) plans on giving mankind eternal life using the power of the human libido. He has kidnapped several people*, including Rachel (Gloria Prat) and her boyfriend, a few hippies, a couple of lesbians and a woman with photos of naked men, and plans on forcing them to make love as much and as often as possible.

He also has a monster to kidnap these young sexual folks.

George (Ricardo Bauleo) is a reporter who follows Dr. Humpp after watching him buy boner pills at a pharmacy. Why does a sex doctor need to buy these things? He follows him to his secret lab and gets captured. He and Rachel make a plan and while George is getting it on with the nurse (Susana Beltrán), he learns that she wants to escape and be part of their plan. The monster has also become obsessed with a stripper that he captured.

Directed by Emilio Vieyra (who wrote this) and Jerald Intrator, this is a movie filled with dialogue like, “I must position this positive electrode against the nerves of the libido. If this experiment succeeds, I’ll not only be able to restrain lust, but also turn humans into veritable screwing machines!,” “Sex dominates the world! And now, I dominate sex!” and “It was I who first discovered how to make a man impotent by hiding his hat. I was the first one to explain the connection between excessive masturbation and entering politics.”

Fog. A monster that plays guitar. A strange and haunting soundtrack that’s as much jazz as early electronic music and I have no way of making it fit into a single category. A movie that tries to look like an Italian horror movie but also has nudity in nearly every scene. And the main power lurking in the shadows? A brain kept alive in fluid. And yes, one of my favorites, ether kidnapping.

The love that I have for this movie cannot be calculated by the logic of alphabets and the weights and measures of the human race.

*All of these scenes are inserts added when the movie made its way to the U.S. You can see Kim Pope (Intimate Teenager) and Kim Lewid (A Thousand Pleasures).

69 EsSINtial SWV Titles (September 15 – 21): Klon, who came up with this list, said “This isn’t the 69 BEST SWV movies, it isn’t my 69 FAVORITE SWV movies, my goal was to highlight 69 of the MOST SWV movies.” You can see the whole list here, including some of the ones I’ve already posted.

This movie is a miracle, because so much went wrong. The actor playing the monstrous Montag the Magnificent walked off the set following a confrontation with Fred Sandy and crew member Ray Sager had to take over the role. And as for the effects, they were basically two dead sheep soaked in PineSol. I can’t even imagine how much everything stunk, like the smell of an adult bookstore before they started making couples friendly places. Handling all those sheep organs was director Herschell Gordon Lewis’ son Robert.

Yes, it’s amazing that a movie with such primitive effects and non-trained actors works so well, but that’s just the weirdness that are the films of Lewis, movies that seem to exist inside vacuums of non-action punctuated by blasts of nausea-imbuing viscera.

Every night, Montag takes the stage and has long-winded speeches about the nature of reality before murdering a woman in front of an audience, then showing that it was all a trick. Then, the same woman dies the same way later that night. Reporters Sherry Carson (Judy Cler) and Greg (Phil Laurenson), along with her boyfriend Jack (Wayne Ratay), know that Montag is behind all of this. They just need to prove it.

The end of this movie breaks from what we expect and goes full psychotic. As they sit on the couch, Jack peels off his own face and reveals Montag before shoving his hands into the stomach of Sherry, who laughs in his face and disputes the illusions and the very nature of Montag’s reality, sending the entire movie back to the very beginning of this movie, creating a loop of reality as Sherry turns to her man and says, “You know what I think? I think he’s a phony.”

69 EsSINtial SWV Titles (September 15 – 21): Klon, who came up with this list, said “This isn’t the 69 BEST SWV movies, it isn’t my 69 FAVORITE SWV movies, my goal was to highlight 69 of the MOST SWV movies.” You can see the whole list here, including some of the ones I’ve already posted.

Also known as Sex and Vampires, Strange Things Happen at Night, Terror of the Vampires, Thrill of the Vampire and Vampire Thrills, this is the third time that Jean Rollin would bring a vampire movie to the screen. Look, if you’re obsessed, you’re obsessed.

Isle (Sandra Julien, Je Suis Frigide… Pourquoi?) and Antoine (Jean-Marie Durand) have just arrived in town for their honeymoon, only to learn that the cousins they plan on staying with have died. But hey — they’re house is open, right? And it’s totally not weird that the two servants (Marie-Pierre Castel and Kuelan Herce) just tell them to stay. Nor is it otherworldly that Isolde (Dominique) emerges from a clock and soon, she’s unable to go out into the sun.

Every woman is naked, bras have spikes in them, castles are filled with fog, Rollin shows a love of the lighting and colors of Bava and the band Acanthu is just rocking so hard that no one can yell loud enough over them to tell them, “Hey this is a dreamy sapphic vampire movie, maybe stop rocking so hard” and they’re just headbanging and smoke is everywhere and just go with it, man.

Also: Not the last lesbian vampire movie Rollin had in him.