While the rest of the exploitation filmmakers were busy filming grainy loops of women peeling oranges, Sarno was busy being the Ingmar Bergman of 42nd Street. He didn’t just want to show skin; he wanted to show the quiet, desperate rot behind the picket fence.

Moonlighting Wives follows Mrs. Joan Rand (Tammy Latour), a woman who realizes that the American Dream is expensive and her husband’s paycheck isn’t cutting it. She goes from being sexually harassed at a stenographer job to organizing a stable of neighborhood wives into a call-girl ring. But this isn’t a girl power heist movie. It’s a Sarno film, which means everyone is miserable. Even when they’re making money, they’re staring into the middle distance, wondering where their souls went.

Based on an actual scandal that took place in Nassau County, NY, in February of 1964, this finds Joan using everyone in her way and paying for it, because when this was made, the bad had to go to jail. Today, she’d be getting away with it and moving on to an even bigger scandal.

Tammy Latour was a staple of Joe Sarno’s early black-and-white “adults only” dramas. This film was thought lost for decades until a print was famously discovered in an eBay film lot and restored. Latour also appears in Sarno’s Flesh and Lace.

The cast also includes Joe Santos, playing one of the detectives. He went on to become a legendary character actor, most famous as Sgt. Dennis Becker on The Rockford Files. He was actually Joe Sarno’s cousin, which is how he ended up in these early “roughies” like this one and The Panic in Needle Park.

As for the belly dancer, that’s Fatima, who was a real-life professional dancer. Sarno often included “floor show” segments in his films to pad the runtime and add “production value” without needing to record synchronized dialogue.

Gretchen Rudolph, who plays Nancy, is also in everything from Fantasm and My Body Hungers to Bed of Violence and Run Swinger Run!

What makes Moonlighting Wives a cut above the usual is that it actually has something to say about the 1960s domestic trap. It’s about the commodification of the Happy Housewife archetype. Joan isn’t a villain; she’s an entrepreneur in a world that gave her no other outlets.

Made in Germany as Mädchenhandel lohnt sich nicht, this is a black-and-white dive into the gutter that feels like it was filmed in the shadow of a rainy alleyway. We’ve got a plot that would make a grindhouse theater owner weep with joy: shady characters luring women to parties, drugging them and peddling them off for cold hard cash and fixes.

According to a reviewer on Letterboxd, in the German version, the nude scenes have been surgically removed. In their place? An off-screen ballad-singing duo who pipes up like a Greek chorus of morality. They don’t just sing; they warn the audience about the soul-crushing reality of trafficking and, at times, literally narrate exactly what is happening on screen as if we’ve suddenly gone blind.

This has a lot and maybe it all, like a street preacher who is screaming about the end of the world, slapflights, an evil boat nightclub, a bad guy named Pretty Boy who is surrounded by women who love him, a cop named Oscar who hangs people by their ankles, a one-eyed bad guy named Willie, big French hair and all dubbed dialogue.

This was directed by Jean-Pierre Bastid, whose book Laissez bronzer les cadavres! was filmed as Let the Corpses Tan. He also directed an erotic horror movie called Hallucinations sadiques and the mondo Les teenagers.

You can watch this on YouTube.

If you’ve ever wondered how the sugary, surf-sprayed innocence of the Frankie and Annette era curdled into the nihilistic, neon-soaked cynicism of the 1970s, look no further than George Axelrod’s Lord Love a Duck. This isn’t just a movie. It’s a scorched-earth policy directed at the American Dream, wrapped in a high school blazer and smelling of desperation.

Alan Musgrave (Roddy McDowall) has spent an entire year fulfilling the dreams of Barbara Ann Greene (Tuesday Weld). Anything to keep her from becoming her mother (Lola Albright), an aging waitress whose life has long passed by. Whether that means Barbara Ann getting to join an exclusive sorority, dropping out of school or marrying Bob Bernard (Martin West), Alan makes it happen. Alan is a Svengali. He doesn’t want to date Barbara Ann; he wants to curate her. When she needs thirteen cashmere sweaters to fit in with the in crowd, he gets them. When her mother stands in the way of Barbara’s social ascent, Alan helps her out of this mortal coil. He frames her suicide as an accidental drowning because, in Alan’s world, a dead mother is a tragedy, but a suicide is just bad PR.

Then, Barbara decides she’s going to be a star and T. Harrison Belmont (Martin Gabel) wants her to star in his beach movies. Bob says no, so of course he’s out. Alan tries to kill him so many times that the boy ends up in a wheelchair, only for Alan to finally kill him and most of their graduating class with an excavator. Barbara Ann lives, stars in Bikini Widow and Alan is sent to prison.

But he did it all for love.

With roles for Ruth Gordon, Harvey Korman, singer Lynn Carey, Frankenstein’s Daughter monster Donald Murphy, Sybil‘s mother Martine Bartlett, 1965 Playboy Playmate of the Year Jo Collins, Dave Draper (the body builder who became movie host David the Gladiator on KHJ Channel 9 in Los Angeles and showed peplum films) and Donald Foster (often a neighbor on shows like Hazel), this was directed by George Axelrod. He directed only one other movie, The Secret Life of an American Wife, but is best known for writing The Seven Year Itch and Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?

McDowell was in his late 30s when he made this, yet he played a teenager. Weld was 22. And who can say what kind of movie they were in? It’s more darkness than farce, a movie where Alan does everything to make Barbara Ann happy and asks nothing in return. It’s like he enjoys being a source of anarchy and chaos, as long as she’s happy. 

I always wondered how we went from beach movies to early 70s New Hollywood. This may be the connection.

Lord Love a Duck is the bridge between the malt shop and the Manson family. It’s a movie where the protagonist is a high-functioning sociopath, and the heroine is a void of pure consumerist greed. McDowall is genuinely unsettling as he plays the role with a frantic, wide-eyed devotion that suggests that, unlike every other male in this movie, Alan doesn’t even want to touch Barbara Ann.

He just wants to watch her consume the world.

Saul Resnick only directed this movie, but he was part of the late 60s sexploitation film scene, serving as cinematographer on Broadway Jungle and shooting Mondo Bizarro and Everybody Loves It. 

Also known as Maidens of Fetish Street, this is about Nick (Ken McCormick), who goes to a club to watch girls dance, which causes him to meditate on people’s sex lives. This is less a nudie or roughie and more softcore noir; it feels gross in the best way, sleazy and leering, dirty without penetration, just the way it’s made.

Every man in this, including Nick, is a loser. Women obsess over them and are upset and confused by them. All is, well, lost. Sometimes, like when one guy gets what he wants, they just cry. And this is way ahead of other films of the era, as women of every size and shape are included, as long as they have the most enormous breasts you’ve ever seen.

Speaking of that crying guy, he’s in love with a sex worker. He’s been in love with her for years. He tells her a few stories, and she barely listens; time is money, and she’s already got his cash. She then tells him every filthy tale about her life, all the men she has on a daily basis, and all he can do is weep as he sprawls on top of her, just another number and not the white knight he was hoping to be. 

Then, a nude model is the fantasy object for a female sculptor. This sequence feels like raw eroticism compared to the first, as the black and white film makes the clay look like flesh. Is this art?

Imagine: a movie set in 20s Los Angeles, shot like a film noir with distorted sound and non-synched voiced, like Carnival of Souls (copyright to Sakana1 on Letterboxd for that amazing connect the dots) but if Candace Hilligoss pulled her car over in the salt flats and suddenly decided that she wanted to give you the kind of lap dance that gives you blue balls for the rest of all eternity. Supposedly, this was based on a play called The Degenerates. Gentry Austin, also on Letterboxd, reminds us that Andy Milligan had a lost film of the same name; one can hope it had the same inspiration (and that Severin gets it out on Blu-ray ASAP).

It ends with Nick giving a black woman a bath alongside his much older wife, then falling for a gorgeous blonde, only to wake up to his wife whipping them both before he’s locked inside an adult bookstore as the night goes on without him.

The cast includes Althea Currier (Mr. Tease and His Playthings, Lorna, Surfside 77, the writer of the Ask Althea column in Adam magazine), Barbara Nordin (Orgy of the Dead), Kellie Everts (whose adult career goes from this movie all the way to Full Service Butler in 1989, a film she also directed; her stage dancing career lasted from March 1966 to August 1987. She then quit to become a producer of dancing and female domination videos, making enough money to purchase a large property with an island in Upstate New York in 1989, where she has lived ever since. Interestingly enough, she was known as a “stripper for God,” often preaching before she took her clothes off, starting her first spiritual talk at the Melody Theater in Times Square. If that’s not enough, she was also one of teh first female bodybuilders, which led to her winning Miss Nude Universe in July 1967, second place in Miss Americana nd Best Body in 1972, second place for Miss Body Beautiful in 1973, Miss Body Beautiful U.S.A. first place in 1974, and second place for Miss Americana and Best Body in 1974, which found her on the same stage as Arnold Schwarzenegger. Now, she has her own religion and her followers believe that she’s an “incarnation of God, much like Ramakrishna.” Wow.) and Margo Lynn Sweet (who is also in The Beach Girls and the Monster).

You can watch this on Mubi and ByNWR.

David Hewitt started his career as an illusionist for a traveling spook show called Dr. Jekyll’s Strange Show before Forrest J. Ackerman helped him get into movies by having his script Journey Into the Unknown made into The Time Travellers. His directing debut was 1965’s Monsters Crash the Pajama Party, a movie in which actors ran into the audience to enhance the film’s antics.

He also directed Dr. Terror’s Gallery of Horrors, which had a title way too close to Amicus’ Dr. Terror’s House of Horrors, so it also ran as Return from the Past, The Blood Suckers, Alien Massacre, The Witch’s Clock and Gallery of Horror. He also directed Hell’s Chosen Few, The Mighty Gorga (he’s also Gorga, the giant ape) and The Tormentors. Later in his career, he moved into optical effects, working on films as varied as Inspector Gadget 2, Willow and The Quiet American.

Today, we’re here to talk about bikers vs. moonshiners vs. the syndicate vs. the government in the exploitation film The Girls From Sunset Strip.

The screenplay for this film came from Pat Boyette, a news anchor in San Antonio, Texas, who went on to become the producer of a daytime talk show, a puppet show and TV commercials. Turning to comics, Boyette worked mainly for Charlton Comics, where his character the Peacemaker — he loves peace so much he’ll kill for it — became the inspiration for the Comedian in Watchmen. He wrote and drew hundreds of comics for Charlton, including Ghost Manor, Ghostly Tales, Space Adventures, The Many Ghosts of Doctor Graves, Cheyenne Kid, Korg: 70,000 B.C., Flash Gordon, Peter Cannon: Thunderbolt, The Phantom and The Six Million Dollar Man. He was also responsible for writing and directing films such as No Man’s Land, The Dungeon of Harrow and The Weird Ones.

Three hillbilly girls — Red, Jessie and Lil — take on three bikers, led by Teach (Gary Kent, The Black Klansman) and aided by Animal and Todd. Of all people, Casey Kasem plays the government man, Conrad, while Jack Starrett (Race with the Devil, Cleopatra Jones) is the sheriff. The hero is Pike, who is played by Jody McCrea. He was in a ton of beach movies, including Operation Bikini, Beach Blanket Bingo and How to Stuff a Wild Bikini. Interestingly, he was the only American International Pictures actor who could surf. And oh yeah — Bing Crosby’s son Lindsay is in this.

But we’re here to talk about the girls, because this movie isn’t called The Boys From Thunder Strip. Red is played by Maray Ayres, who is also in The Cycle Savages and looks a lot like Mary Woronov. Jessie is Megan Timothy, who appeared in three of Hewitt’s films, as well as in Al Damanson and Bud Cardos’ The Female Bunch, and in Russ Meyer’s Good Morning… and Goodbye! Lil is Melinda MacHarg, who really didn’t do much other than this film.

The film starts with one of the girls being assaulted by one of the boys, but honestly, stuff just happens after that. I mean it — sides are constantly switched, cops are brought in and turned on in moments, and Pike keeps getting beaten up.

It was shot on Spahn Ranch, a 500-acre property located in Chatsworth, California. Perhaps you’ve heard of it.  In Brian Albright’s Wild Beyond Belief!: Interviews with Exploitation Filmmakers of the 1960s, Gary Kent said that members of Manson’s Family would often visit craft services and beg for food.

The Girls From Thunder Strip was shot by cinematographer Gary Graver, who was, of course, Orson Welles’s preferred cameraman. Honestly, the behind-the-scenes stories of this movie are probably way more interesting than what was filmed.