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.
Known as Brainiac in the U.S., this was directed by Chano Urueta, who helped Blue Demon get on the silver screen and was written by Federico Curiel, who would make The Champions of Justice, several Santo movies and Neutron.
All the way back in 1661, Baron Vitelius was burned at the stake during the Inquisition and claimed that the next time a certain comet passed by the Earth, all of the children of those that did him wrong would pay. I mean, you would think a bunch of religious folks would treat a necromantic sorcerer better, but such is life in ancient Mexico.
Three hundred years later, Baron Vitelius rides back in on that comet and is now able to change at will into a monster able to suck out the brains of his victims via a gigante forked tongue, which is incredibly easy to do thanks to his ability to hypnotize his victims.
How bonkers is this movie? No less than Frank Zappa and Captain Beefheart paid tribute to it in their song “Debra Kadabra,” saying “Turn it to Channel 13 / And make me watch the rubber tongue / When it comes out! From the puffed and flabulent Mexican rubber-goods mask / Next time they show the Binaca / Make me buy The Flosser / Make me grow Brainiac Fingers / But with more hair!”
In America, we’d be satisfied with an evil alien. In Mexico, they added the fact that he was a wizard who brought people back from the dead before he was burned alive and took a ride on a heavenly body for three hundred years. Viva la peliculas de terror!
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.
The Awful Dr. Orloff stars Howard Vernon stars as the surgical villain, who with the help of his blind minion Morpho, is out and about and taking the flesh of women to fix the face of his daughter.
Concerned with how the film would be handled by Spanish censors, Franco made a safe version for his home country and another for British and Spanish audiences that had some nudity. And still, Spanish censors were worried that this movie would damage the reputation of their country, so Franco set it in France.
This is where Franco starts and the films that follow would riff on these themes, like a doom band surrounded by smoke playing the same notes over and over but so loud that your head starts to buzz and you keep hearing the same notes and then the riff changes and for Franco, that’s a quick zoom and women just lounging as murders happen all around them and then the riff gets heavier and chugs and moves and you’re in another reality where blind men are ordered by their masters to get alabaster skin for the daughter they love and you can’t wait to buy a shirt before you drive home in the snow.
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.
Known as Samson vs. the Vampire Women in the U.S., this is one of four Santo films that were dubbed into English and released north of the border. Blame K. Gordon Murray, a distributor of Mexican films whose movies mainly played children-friendly weekend matinees or late night TV thanks to American-International TV.
A coven of vampire women awaken in their crypt after two centuries of sleep. Their leader, Queen Zorina, just wants to go back to Hell with her husband Lucifer — man, I love this movie — and to get here there, Tundra makes a vow to take the granddaughter of a woman who escaped her evil grip.
The only person that can save her is Santo, as his grandfather once saved the day all those years before. To get there, he’s going to have to fight a werewolf and then all of the vampire women, who decide they need to see Santo’s face, but the fun comes up and they all explode into flames. The silver masked man jumps in his convertible and drives away, satisfied with killing monsters for today.
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.
In The Golden Turkey Awards, the Medveds claim that Arch Hall Jr.’s performance as Tommy is “one of the low points in the history of American cinema” and that he has “a face only a mother could love.” He was sixteen when he made this movie, so that feels like a lot of punching down.
Well, maybe they were mad that their dad never put them in a movie.
Well, Arch Hall Sr. thought his son was going to be a star — even if that son said that he couldn’t sing — and made an Elvis movie starring his boy.
Roxy Miller (Marilyn Manning) drives out and accidentally hits Eegah (Richard Kiel) with her car. When she tells her boyfriend Tom Nelson (Arch Hall Jr.) and her father Robert (Arch Hall Sr.), her dad runs out into the desert to try and get a picture. He disappears, she finds him and he’s learned how to speak to the creature and has learned how it has stayed alive all this time. Of course, Eegah wants to marry his daughter, so he says alright, hoping that they can escape.
When they do, Eegah runs after them and dies at a pool party, but not before Ray Dennis Steckler gets thrown into the water. He would go on to make the next Arch Hall Jr. movie, Wild Guitar.
This was shot in the same Bronson Canyon area that Robot Monster was filmed at. In fact, Ro-Man’s base is the same cave that Eegah makes his home.
My favorite thing in this movie was that the sound recorder screwed up his job, so when Robert yells, “Watch out for snakes!” his lips never move.
Golden Oldies Week (July 27 – August 3) Something Weird Video have released such a wide range of movies over the last 30 years that trying to categorize them can be tricky. They started out as a gray market mail order distributor (aka a bootlegger) not unlike the Cape Copy Center or Sinister Cinema and eventually moved into the niche se ploit titles that would set them apart. The movies on this list are the kind of cult genre titles that were the bread and butter of many of the bootleg companies of the 90s and most were not exclusive to SWV. If you look in the catalogs or on the website these would be under categories like “Nightmare Theatre’s Late Night Chill-O-Rama Horror Show,” “Jaws of the Jungle,” “Sci-fi Late Night Creature Feature Show,” or “Spies, Thighs & Private Eyes.” Many of these are currently available as downloads from the SWV site (until the end of 2024)!
Roberto Mauri isn’t talked about as often as he should be. There’s his oddball King of Kong Island, his Westerns like He Was Called Holy Ghost and his masterful Madeleine: Anatomy of a Nightmare. Now, after this, I need to look up more of his movies.
Released in America on TV as Slaughter of the Vampires and then as a double feature with The Blood Beast Terror — renamed as The Vampire Beast Craves Blood — as Curse of the BloodGhouls, this has the kind of tagline that definitely made me want to watch it: “Satan’s Horror Henchmen enslave beautiful women through weird ways of love transforming them into Blood Ghoul Vampires to satisfy an insatiable LUST.”
This stars Walter Brandi, who was also in The Vampire and the Ballerina and The Playgirls and the Vampire. He plays Wolfgang, who has just become married to Louise (Graziella Granata), and they are unaware that a vampire (Dieter Eppler) has entered the party they’re having. He soon seduces Louise and bites her, which means that Wolfgang must look for a cure, finally meeting Dr. Nietzche (Luigi Batzella).
Where Hammer has rich color, this is shot in black and white, but it’s a whole different type of beautiful filmmaking. The real castle adds quite the scenery and if this movie can’t have crimson blood, it can have bosoms barely held back by their costumes and that is always enough.
Herschell Gordon Lewis week (July 14 – 20) HG seemed to truly love packing theaters. He’s most famous for introducing gore to horror movies, but he’d fill any need that the audience had. He made every genre of exploitation __ – even kids movies! Gore movies would’ve happened eventually, but Herschell seemed to take joy in crafting gross-out shocks for unsuspecting cineasts. INTERESTING FACT! HG Lewis was a huge fan of Kentucky Fried Chicken and had them cater all of his productions. Col. Harland Sanders himself appeared in Lewis’ Blast Off Girls!
Chicago private detective Russell Harper (Scott Osborne) and his assistant Diana (Louise Downe, using the name Vicki Miles; she wrote several of Lewis’ films such as Linda and Abilene, Just for the Hell of It, Blood Feast and The Girl The Body and The Pill. She was a student at the University of Miami, where she studied to become a psychiatrist. She dropped out of premed school because she couldn’t handle cutting up things in anatomy class, which is funny, because again, she wrote Blood Feast. She was married to Lewis from 1962 to 1971.) are looking for a missing husband, which leads them — as these things happen and most often happen in the movies of Herschell Gordon Lewis and David F. Friedman — to a Florida nudist camp.
Is there a trampoline? Yes.
Is there a swimming scene? Yes, in a muddy body of water that I wouldn’t swim in wearing a hazmat suit.
Will a woman get naked and then put back on her high heels? Yes. Doesn’t that happen all the time?
Perhaps I have seen too many nudie cuties by this point but they have also become the warmest of blankets at the end of a stressful day.
This 1962 American independent horror film is literally an auteur production: it was written, produced and directed by Herk Harvey, as well as featuring him in the role of the spectral figure that haunts its heroine.
While teaching and directing plays at the University of Kansas, Harvey started working for the Centron Corporation as a film director, writer, and producer on industrial films and commercials. He was lauded for his special effects techniques and ability to work under budget.
After the success of low budget films by Elmer Rhoden Jr. and fellow industrial filmmaker in nearby Kansas City, Harvey secured $33,000 in funding to make his lone film, although he attempted to film several others. Because the company that distributed the film went bankrupt, it wasn’t seen much in initial release but soon gained an audience at drive-ins and via late night showings.
For the rest of his life, Harvey continued creating industrial films and acting, even appearing in the harrowing made-for-TV movie, The Day After. Luckily, he did live to see people recognize this film as a classic. He died weeks after the soundstage at the University of Kansas was renamed the Herk Harvey Sound Stage.
Mary Henry gets involved in a drag race with her car going off the bridge. The police drag the waters for three hours before she rises, unsure how she could have survived.
Our heroine movs to Utah, a place where can’t connect to anyone and can only get organ music on the radio. Her journey to her new home is marked by appearances by “The Man” (Harvey), a spectral figure that comes and goes, and an abandoned pavilion on the Great Salt Lake that begs for her to visit it in the twilight.
Mary begins to disappear from the world, becoming invisible and unheard by everyone around her, as if she weren’t there. And on her first day at her new job as a church organist, when she begins to play an eerie tune, The Man and a group of corpses begin to dance until the minister begins to scream, “Profane! Sacrilege!” Truly, diabolus in musica — those demonic tritones are afoot.
Every attempt to escape the town is stopped by The Man and his dead people, including them taking over an entire bus. Finally, Mary makes her way back to the pavilion, where she watches them dance and notices that a ghoul version of herself is with The Man. She runs, but they catch her. The minister, a doctor and the police try to find Mary, but as they follow her footprints in the sand — is this when God was carrying her? — they end with no trace. Back in Kansas, her car is finally found beneath the water with her dead body still inside.
The US release of Carnival of Souls failed to include the copyright on the prints, automatically placing them in the public domain. That’s how numerous TV stations would show different prints of this movie, cut however they wished to fit its timeslot. Again, it wasn’t until the late 1980’s that this film would be recognized as the arty horror that it is, a precursor to the work of artists like David Lynch and George Romero, who specifically said that it inspired him to make Night of the Living Dead.
In turn, this is a movie inspired by the silent films of the past, with parts where Mary is in one of her altered mental states being tinted cyan while all the scenes of reality appear in black and white. Later, the tinted scenes become distorted in both sound and picture. There’s also an original organ score by composer Gene Moore that makes this movie feel trapped in cinema’s past.
The Church of Satan’s leader Anton LaVey spoke glowingly of this movie: “Carnival of Souls is another richly evocative film that has been completely lost until recently. Producer/director Herk Harvey did industrial films and this was his brilliant excursion into the world of nightmares.”
Nicholas Merriweather, who wrote this, is Arch Hall Sr. He wanted to make his son, Arch Hall Jr., into a star. Before that, he was a legitimate cowboy and even had a Native American name: Waa-toe-gala Oak-Shilla, which means Wild Boy. In fact, when he died, he was buried in a full Sioux ceremony led by Lakota Sioux spiritual leader Frank Fools Crow. Before that, he was a pilot and stuntman who finally started his own studio, Fairway Productions, making movies like Eegah, The Corpse Grinders and The Sadist.
Arch Hall Jr. was a pilot after his short Hollywood life. He also used the name Nicolas Merriweather as a writer.
Wild Guitar was directed by Ray Dennis Steckler, who also made The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombiesand who rivals Joe D’Amato for alternate names, such as Sven Christian, Michel J. Rogers, Henri-Pierre Duval, Pierre Duvall, Sven Hellstrom, Ricardo Malatoté, Harry Nixon, Michael J. Rogers, Wolfgang Schmidt, Cindy Lou Steckler, R.D. Steckler, Ray Steckler, Cindy Lou Sutters and, of course, Cash Flagg. He also plays one of the bad guys, Steak.
The world of Wild Guitar seems on the surface like our own but no, it is not. It is a world that Bud Eagle (Hall Jr.) is seen as the next big star and is manipulated by big Hollywood boss Mike McCauley (William Watters, but that’s Hall Sr. being the heel to his boy) on the surface, but you’re seeing a universe that has been created by lunatics who think that their creation is normal when no, it is not. It is a mirror world that we stare into and worry that we will never properly leave. And yet we love this movie for that, as it is never boring. Bud misses his brother, who he writes letters to, and loves Vickie (Nancy Czar), a former figure skater that he’s met like once. I want this world to be the one I live in, a place where the giant headed Arch Hall Jr. can be the hottest star in the galaxy.
This does feel like part of a cinematic universe, as posters and props from Eegah are everywhere and the song “Vickie” was also in that movie. There are also posters for The Choppers and Wild Ones On Wheels.
Clément (Jean-Louis Trintignant) is the rich son of an industrialist who has come to join a far right terrorist group. Despite being married to a former actress named Anne (Romy Schneider) and having anything he wants, he blows up the home of a socialist politician, killing the man and having to hide in a windmill owned by his old friend Paul, who is a socialist.
Once Clément learns that he was railroaded by his friends, he goes for revenge while his wife and Paul fall in love. He’s gone to South America where he works with what’s left of the Third Reich before coming back and challenging his one-time friend to a duel.
Directed by Alain Cavalier and written along with Jean-Paul Rappeneau, this looks gorgeous and presents a woman torn between two men who both love her but are on the opposite sides of outlook.
The Radiance Films blu ray of Le Combat Dans L’ile has a 2K Restoration from the original camera negative, a 1962 interview with Cavalier, a 1983 interview with Jean-Louis Trintignant, an analysis of the movie by critic Philippe Roger, short films by the firector, behind the scenes photos, a trailer, a reversible sleeve, a limited edition booklet featuring new writing on the film by critic Ben Sachs and scholar and author of Late-Colonial French Cinema, Mani Sharpe. This is limited to 3000 copies and comes in Radiance’s trademark packaging, presented in full-height Scanavo packaging with removable OBI strip leaving packaging free of logos and markings. You can get it from MVD.
Directed by Yuzo Kawashima and written by Kaneto Shindo (Onibaba), this is the story of the Maeda family. They live in a small apartment and are always ready to hide just how much money they have, all so they can continue the plans of their father figure, ex-naval officer Tokizo (Yunosuke Ito).
Tomoko (Yūko Hamada) is sleeping with a rich author, but is always asking for more money, always for the family. Minoru (Manamitsu Kawabata) works at a music talent agency and is stealing money. As for where it all goes, Tokizo is investing in a new Japanese military while Minoru keeps spending it all on Yukie (Ayako Wakao) who is going to figure all of this out because she’s the accountant at the same company. But the joke is on them, because Yukie has been sleeping with more than one man, all so she can have her own hotel.
Now the author can evict them, the family can sell everything they’ve bought and another scam will have to be created. At least this isn’t the same poverty they dealt with at the end of the war. Somehow, this is all within an apartment.
The Radiance Films blu ray release of Elegant Beast has a new 4K restoration, an interview with film critic Toshiaki Sato, an appreciation by filmmaker Toshiaki Toyoda, a visual essay by critic Tom Mes on post-war architecture in Japanese cinema and a trailer, all with a limited edition booklet featuring new writing by Midori Suiren. You can get this from MVD.
B&S About Movies 
You must be logged in to post a comment.