Based on The Loved One: An Anglo-American Tragedy — a novella, as Quentin Tarantino would remind us — by Evelyn Waugh and The American Way of Death by Jessica Mitford, this was directed by Tony Richardson from a script by Terry Southern and Christopher Isherwood.

Richardson was coming off Tom Jones, Southern Dr. Strangelove and Isherwood had just written one of his best-regarded novels, A Single Man. 

This is the point of success where creatives can do anything they want.

What they made is “The motion picture with something to offend everyone!”

Dennis Barlow (Robert Morse)  wins an airline ticket from England to America and decides to visit his uncle, Hollywood production staffer Sir Francis Hinsley (John Gielgud). After thirty years of service, he’s fired by his boss D.J. Jr. (Roddy McDowall) and hangs himself.

This is a comedy.

Dennis spends the inheritance his uncle left him on a fancy funeral at Whispering Glades cemetery, a place where he meets and falls in love with Aimee Thanatogenos (Anjanette Comer, The Baby), a cosmetic mortuary worker who was named for radio revivalist Aimee Semple McPherson and who is also the object of affection from the embalmer known as Mr. Joyboy (Rod Steiger).

Whispering Glades is overwhelming, the kind of place where Tab Hunter and Liberace are your tour guides, taking you through the gravestones. It’s owned by Reverend Wilbur Glenworthy (Jonathan Winters), who puts on a holy act but is really just a man who knows how to make money.

Meanwhile, Dennis works for Happier Hunting Grounds, which is owned by Wilbur’s brother Henry (also Winters). He wants to win over Aimee, but all he knows are stolen poems and he works a job at a place she finds sacrilegious. She also lives in a house in near-constant danger of falling off a cliff.

There’s also boy genius Gunther Fry (Paul Williams), who is sending the corpses of pets into space as his first astronauts. This kind of plan is something the Reverend wants to get in on, as he dreams of making more money running a retirement home and needs to get rid of all the bodies in the ground.

By the end, everything that Aimee believed in is a lie. She hooks herself up to an embalming machine as a result. Not even Dennis, her beloved boss, her guru (Lionel Stander) or Mr. Joyboy give her the solace or the advice that she is looking for. Her body is sent into space as Dennis flies home first class.

Waugh’s book came up when he visited Hollywood in 1947. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer offered him a six-figure deal for Brideshead Revisited, but he wanted control that the studio wouldn’t give him. While there, he became fascinated by the American funeral industry, which led to him writing an article about Forest Lawn cemetery — where this was filmed — and its founder Dr. Hubert Eaton. Then, he wrote The Loved One.

By all accounts, he hated that this movie was being made. He definitely died before he saw it, as he unexpectedly died three days after its premiere in London, which he did not attend. When this was shown for studio execs, many were so offended that they walked out in the middle.

That was what Richardson wanted.

However, he did not want to offend Waugh.

In his memoirs, Richardson claimed to be a great admirer of the writer and had been upset by how much he hated the movie. He said it was all over a misunderstanding, as he had been quoted as saying the novel was “thin and dated.” He further upset the author by hiring his literary rival Isherwood to work on the script.

I forgot so many more people in this, like Dana Andrews, Milton Berle, James Coburn, Barbara Nichols, Bernie Kopell, Joy Harmon and Jamie Farr. It’s just people upon people, kind of like It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. Sadly, Ruth Gordon and Jayne Mansfield’s parts ended up cut from the film.

And I didn’t even mention Mr. Joyboy’s mother.

Part of Herschell Gordon Lewis’ so-called Blood Trilogy with Blood Feast and Two Thousand Maniacs!, this one concerns Adam Sorg, an artist who is seeking the perfect color red for his latest masterpiece. While conventional science would tell you that blood would turn brown when it dries, in this movie, it remains the same garish tone that an Italian giallo would feature.

Color Me Blood Red and A Bucket of Blood are essentially the same basic film, except that where Roger Corman keeps much of the violence off-screen, you’re here for a Lewis film to see blood and organs splash all over the screen. You’re not here for subtlety.

Gordon Oas-Heim is positively unhinged here as the lead. It’s kind of amazing that years later, he’d play Manford the butler on The New Monkees. He also shows up in Lewis’ Moonshine Mountain as the sheriff (he used the stage name Adam Sorg here!) and also is in Andy Warhol’s Bad.

This would be the last film from the duo of Lewis and David F. Friedman. There were plans to make a fourth in the series — Suburban Roulette* — but Friedman thought they’d done all they could when it came to gore. He’d move on to make roughies and nudie cuties like A Smell of Honey, a Swallow of Brine; 7 Into Snowy and The Acid Eaters, as well as Love Camp 7 and Ilsa She-Wolf of the SS using the name Herman Traeger.

You can watch this on Tubi or get the Arrow Video blu ray from Diabolik DVD. That has audio commentary by Lewis and Friedman, as well as Something Weird as a second bonus film. If you don’t have the gigantic Lewis box set, this is a great purchase.

*Lewis would end up making a movie with this title in 1968.

Made just before Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!, Motorpsycho has bikers Brahmin (Steve Oliver), Slick (Thomas Scott) and Rufus (F. Rufus Owens) assaulting women and killing their husbands. Their next victim is Gail Maddox (Holle K. Winters), the wife of veterinarian Cory Maddox (Alex Rocco). As he gets her to the hospital, the gang have already tracked their next victim, Ruby Bonner (Haji, who seriously seems to be some kind of goddess from another planet*), the way too young wife of Harry Bonner (Coleman Francis), who she hates with all her being. They’re both shot and left for dead, but Cory saves her and says he can take her as far as the next town. He wants to kill everyone who dared touch his wife.

There’s an incredible scene where a snake bites Cory and he demands that Ruby suck the poison out. It gets wild, let me tell you. “Suck it!” he keeps yelling. Man, Russ Meyer is anything but subtle.

I imagine that this story is taking place in the same desert as Pussycat! and we’re just lucky that the male bikers never met Varla, Rosie and Billie.

Haji’s real name was Barbarella Catton. Beyond the two Meyer movies mentioned already, she’s also in his movies Good Morning and… Goodbye!, Beyond the Valley of the Dolls and Supervixens. She started exotic dancing at the age of 14 and she wrote most of her dialogue in his movies. I’m overjoyed by the fact that she’s also in Demonoid, one of my favorite movies, as well as Wam Bam Thank You Spaceman, Bigfoot,  and Ilsa, Harem Keeper of the Oil Sheiks, using the name Haji Cat. She continued performing in burlesque shows until a year before her death in 2013.

* I have evidence. She told Chris Poggiali, “I’ve always claimed that I’m just a visitor from another place, here to restore energy to my body. My mother was from another galaxy. She brought me here, and we settled in Quebec, but I’ve been here many times before that.”

Directed by Bill Rebane and an uncredited Herschell Gordon Lewis, Monster A Go-Go has astronaut  Frank Douglas (Henry Hite) — or maybe an alien impersonating him — coming back to Earth and going wild, often being restrained by scientists, not that anyone sees it. Most of the movie seemingly must be inferred from dialogue or read by the narrator. Rebane gave up on this movie in 1961 and Lewis came back to finish it, as he needed something to show along with Moonshine Mountain. Characters disappear, never to return. There is nothing resembling normalcy.

The movie ends with this narration: “As if a switch had been turned, as if an eye had been blinked, as if some phantom force in the universe had made a move eons beyond our comprehension, suddenly, there was no trail! There was no giant, no monster, no thing called “Douglas” to be followed. There was nothing in the tunnel but the puzzled men of courage, who suddenly found themselves alone with shadows and darkness! With the telegram, one cloud lifts, and another descends. Astronaut Frank Douglas, rescued, alive, well, and of normal size, some 8,000 miles away in a lifeboat, with no memory of where he has been, or how he was separated from his capsule! Then who, or what, has landed here? Is it here yet? Or has the cosmic switch been pulled? Case in point: The line between science fiction and science fact is microscopically thin! You have witnessed the line being shaved even thinner! But is the menace with us? Or is the monster gone?”

Most horror movies end with the monster chased down and killed. This one ends with Lewis reading those words, probably because that was cheaper. You have to admire that.

You can watch this on YouTube.

“Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to violence, the word and the act. While violence cloaks itself in a plethora of disguises, its favorite mantle still remains… sex. Violence devours all it touches, its voracious appetite rarely fulfilled. Yet violence doesn’t only destroy, it creates and molds as well. Let’s examine closely then this dangerously evil creation, this new breed encased and contained within the supple skin of woman. The softness is there, the unmistakable smell of female, the surface shiny and silken, the body yielding yet wanton. But a word of caution: handle with care and don’t drop your guard. This rapacious new breed prowls both alone and in packs, operating at any level, any time, anywhere, and with anybody. Who are they? One might be your secretary, your doctor’s receptionist… or a dancer in a go-go club!”

You know how I always say, “They could have stopped making movies after this?” This is the movie at the center of my argument. I really don’t know how any movie gets any better than this, unless Russ Meyer is directing it.

The three worst women you’ve ever met — and also the finest — finish their dance routines at a club and then head out to the California desert where they race their car and verbally abuse one another. They are Billie (Laurie Williams), Rosie (Haji) and Varla (Tura Satana, perhaps the finest thing Satan ever made for the Lord). They follow that up by sizing up the guy mansplaining things to his girl and snap his neck before drugging his woman, Linda (Susan Bernard).

Stopping to fill up, they learn that a wheelchair-bound man and his feebleminded son are literally sitting on a treasure. So they do what you or I would do — manipulate, manhandled and murder everyone in their way.

Originally known as The Leather Girls and then The Mankillers, this isn’t a movie as much as a religion to me. No less a cultural giant as John Waters said, “Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! is, beyond a doubt, the best movie ever made. It is possibly better than any film that will be made in the future.”

Tura Satana is the kind of woman that if she wasn’t born, we would have created her and made her into a goddess. There have been many pretenders to her throne, but none will ever ascend it.

Seriously, I wore the t-shirt of this movie for most of the 90s before it fell apart. If you dislike this movie, we can never, ever be friends.

The art for this comes from this site.

Man, the Woolner Brothers put out some wild movies.

Directed by Hugo Grimaldi — and writer Arthur C. Pierce — this has the Intergalactic Council send Dr. Kolos (Richard Kiel) on a mission for their galaxy domination program to replace humans with androids just like him. If his mission happens, the world will be taken over. If not, he dies.

He quickly enslaves Prof. Vaughan Dornheimer (George Macready) and starts making the androids and takes over the top scientists of the world — like Dr. Munson (Walter Abel) — and uses them to steal the things they need to keep making more copies of humans.

The professor’s daughter Lisa (Dolores Faith) and Glenn Martin (George Nader) are on the case, but soon, Glenn is duplicated. His girlfriend Gale Wilson (Barbara Nichols) figures it out and the cops open fire on the fake Glenn, who rips his arm off to escape. As for the real Glenn, he’s found the professor just as the android professor takes over, ties up Dr. Kolos and uses several copies of the evil Thor (John Indrisano) to steal Lisa and start making a duplicate of her.

She’s saved at the last minute by Dr. Kolos, who has a change of heart, knowing that he is an android and will soon die. However, he was able to see the human race and the beauty of mankind.

Filmed at the same time as the movie it played double features with — Mutiny In Space — this was re-released on VHS as Jaws of the Alien after Kiel became a star for playing the James Bond henchman.

Assassination in Rome AKA El secreto de Bill North (The Secret of Bill North) was directed and co-written by Silvio Amadio, who also made Amuck! and Smile Before Death. It was co-written by Giovanni Simonelli, who also wrote Jungle Raiders, Seven Deaths In the Cat’s Eye and Django Shoots First.

Dick Sherman (Hugh O’Brien) is an American reporter who has settled in Rome, covering scandalous celebrity stories. A dead body is found at the Trevi Fountain — already famous from La Dolce Vita and Three Coins in the Fountain to movie watchers — which sets this whole mystery off. There’s also American Shelley North (Cyd Charisse), on vacation in Italy with new husband Bill (Alberto Dalbés) when he goes missing. Decades ago, she and Dick had an affair and she calls to him for help, which doesn’t work all that well with Dick’s current love interest Erika (Eleonora Rossi Drago, Camille 2000).

There’s also a MacGuffin that everyone needs to find that keeps getting stolen, lots of gorgeous parties and even a trip to Cinecittà studios where a peplum is being filmed. Known in Italy as Il segreto del vestito rosso, which is more of an Edgar Wallace-style title, this is an early giallo before the genre had been fully formed, arriving just a few years after The Girl Who Knew Too Much. It has some style and huge society parties, plus Dick’s office bar is bigger than the one in my house and everyone smokes inside, making me love everything about this movie, even if by the end Dick doesn’t seem all that moved by all the death that surrounds him.

Also: The poster and U.S. title for this looks like a Eurospy film. If it had come out a few years later, it would have had an animal name and had a poster with Cyd Charisse’s $5 million dollar legs in full view.

The only movie directed by Garibaldi Serra Caracciolo, who used the name Finney Cliff, The Seventh Grave is one wild movie.

Written by Caracciolo, Antonio Casale (who plays Jenkins in this movie as the Americanized name John Anderson; he was also assistant director using the name Paul Sciamann) and Alessandro Santini (using the name Edmond W. Carloff; he also directed and wrote La pelle sotto gli artigli and Questa libertà di avere… le ali bagnate, which was co-written by Renato Polselli). this all takes place in Scotland after Sir Reginald Thorne dies from leprosy. As happens in these movies, the family comes to his estate for the last will and testament to be read.

Attorney Bill Elliot (Nando Angelini) and his assistant, a waitress named Betty (Germana Dominici), prepare to tell who gets what to the assembled friends and family, who include Jenkins (Antonio Casale) and his mistress Mary (Bruna Baini); his brother Fred (Gianni Dei, Patrick Still Lives); Sir Reginald’s assistant Patrick (Calogero Reale); Reverend Crabbe (Ferruccio Viotti) and Colonel Percival (Umberto Borsato) and his psychic daughter Katy (Stefania Nelli).

According to Sir Reginald’s request, everyone must stay together for 48 hours and explore the mansion, as the treasure of Sir Francis Drake is hidden there. Huh? Well, soon Patrick is dead, the coffin with Sir Reginald’s body is empty and Inspector Wright (Armando Guarnieri) is on the case.

This feels like The Cat and the Canary meets an Italian Gothic with a seance and a masked killer and oh, maybe we should add some psychic powers. I mean, that’s exactly what it is. And I loved it. It’s such a baffling movie, made with so many people who didn’t do much else and I’m kind of obsessed with learning more about it.

You can get this as part of Severin’s Danza Macabra Vol. 1 box set or watch it on Tubi.

Al Adamson was the son of silent film stars Denver Dixon and Dolores Booth. After working on some of his father’s later films, he started his own production company with Sam Sherman called Independent-International Pictures.

From tinting a Filipino horror movie neon hues and releasing it as a movie shot in Spectrum X — Horror of the Blood Monsters — to filming two movies at Spahn Ranch and making two softcore stewardess movies in one year (1975’s The Naughty Stewardesses and Blazing Stewardesses, which actually had parts written by the elderly Three Stooges who were unable to appear), Adamson’s movies are all over the map. His films Dracula vs. Frankenstein and Carnival Magic are both shockingly inept and amazingly transcendent, sometimes at the very same time. Yeah, I get the incongruity of this statement.

This movie was to be a straight action picture, back when it had the title Echo of Terror. But soon, it turned into a vehicle for Adamson to promote Tacey Robbins’ singing amidst a plot where a murderous jewel thief stalks a woman and her child after jewels are hidden inside the girl’s Christie Minstrel doll. Yes, a singing black baby doll that sings old slave songs, 1965 grindhouse fare ain’t the place to find woke storylines. I’d imagine that this plot point was cribbed from The Night of the Hunter.

Amazingly, Adamson would resurrect this movie numerous times over the next several years, turning it into a veritable zombie of a film. In 1969, it was completely re-edited, with John Carradine as a mad scientist added after the fact, and re-released as The Fiend with the Electronic Brain.

Two years after that, Adamson added even more footage to the film, including scenes with his wife Regina Carrol, and created an entirely new version called Blood of Ghastly Horror. The fact that three different movies are vying for one coherent narrative probably didn’t matter to Adamson. All of this was released one more time as a fourth version of the film, The Man With the Synthetic Brain. I can only imagine the confusion of some viewers who had to be sure they’d seen this movie before, as the main villain’s motivations go from being simply villainous to being experimented on by an evil doctor to dying early in the third and fourth versions of the film before his father brings a zombie to gain revenge on the family of the evil doctor. Imagine a movie being a sequel to itself but never telling you! Talk about confusing!