Tag Archives: 1968

USA UP ALL NIGHT: Barbarella (1968)

Posted on by

EDITOR’S NOTE: Barbarella was on USA Up All Night on January 23 and October 9, 1993 and November 19, 1994.

Shot directly after Mario Bava’s Danger: Diabolik, this Roger Vadim-directed movie is based on the comic book of the same name by Jean-Claude Forest. The film stars Vadim’s then-wife Jane Fonda as Barbarella, a United Earth agent sent to find scientist Durand Durand, who has created a weapon that could destroy humanity.

Vadim was hired to direct this film after producer Dino De Laurentiis purchased the rights. This led to Vadim looking to cast several actresses in the title role, including Virna Lisi, Brigitte Bardot (that’s who the character was originally based on) and Sophia Loren before ending up picking his wife.

In case you’re wondering why this movie is such a mess, Charles B. Griffith was the last writer to work on it, saying that he had done uncredited work on the script after fifteen other writers — including Terry Southern — worked on the movie.

This film is packed with fashion, amazing sets — you can credit Bava’s film for some of that, and great characters, like John Phillip Law (who used the break in shooting to be in the aforementioned Danger: Diabolik) as Pygar the angel, Anita Pallenberg (Performance) as the Black Queen, Milo O’Shea as Durand-Durand, Marcel Marceau in a rare speaking role as Professor Ping, David Hemmings (Deep Red) as Dildano and even cameos from Fabio Testi and Antonio Sabato (who was originally to play the role that Hemmings ended up doing).

So yeah. This is a gorgeous film that makes no sense whatsoever. Is that such a bad thing? I first watched this as a child on HBO and I think when the part came in which the birds tear apart Barbarella’s clothes, my parents decided that it was time for me to go to bed. I was hooked on movies that were seen as being wrong for me to watch and Italian-shot films.

A sequel was planned with producer Robert Evans called Barbarella Goes Down, but it never happened. Nor did a 1990 remake, a Robert Rodriguez idea or a potential project with Nicolas Winding Refn, who moved on to other projects, saying, “…certain things are better left untouched. You don’t need to remake everything.”

WEIRD WEDNESDAY: Psych-Out (1968)

Posted on by

Dude, Richard Rush has sure made some disparate movies. There’s Thunder Alley, Hells Angels on Wheels and The Stunt Man, then there’s Air America and Color of Night. But he also made this, which reminds me that if I were alive in 1968, I would have died young.

Jenny (Susan Strasberg) is a deaf girl looking for her brother Steve, who left behind a note that said, “Jess Saes: God is alive and well and living in a sugar cube.” That leads her to Haight-Ashbury and the band Mumblin’ Jim, led by Stoney (Jack Nicholson).

Henry Jaglom, who wrote My Lunches With Orson: Conversations Between Henry Jaglom and Orson Welles, is an artist who does the band’s posters. When they go to see him, he’s so messed up on 2,5-Dimethoxy-4-methylamphetamine that he thinks everyone is the living dead and threatens them with a saw. But that’s where Jenny sees some of her brother’s art and learns that he’s become a traveling preacher known as The Seeker. Dave (Dean Stockwell), who left the band, offers to help them find him, but everyone nearly dies in the junkyard when the gang — led by John “Bud” Cardos — attacks.

The Seeker shows up, and yep, he’s Bruce Dern. He reveals that Jenny was beaten so badly by their mother that she had a stroke and went deaf. He wants to be clean from drugs when they meet. Meanwhile, his sister is caught between Stoney and Dave.

This movie ends as all hippy films must, in death and fire, as Stoney sets his shrine ablaze and Dave saves a tripping Jenny from a car coming right at her by sacrificing himself, remarking that he hopes death will be a good trip as he dies.

Dick Clark produced this, and like a true square, he wanted the drug message to show how wrong it was to get hooked. Ah, I’m being mean.

Let’s be nice — the stunts and special effects are by Gary Kent, whose adventures make up the documentary Danger God. The Strawberry Alarm Clock, The Seeds and The Storybook made most of the music in this, and the concert scenes are worth watching the entire film. Plus, Garry Marshall plays an undercover cop!

KO-FI SUPPORTER: Marijuana Man (1968)

Posted on by

EDITOR’S NOTE: Today’s movie is brought to you by Eddie R., who subscribed at the Big B&S’er tier.

Would you like me to write about the movies of your choice? It’s simple!

  1. Visit Ko-Fi.
  2. Join as a monthly member for just $1. That makes you a Little B&S’er.
  3. As a Medium B&S’er at just $3 a month, if you pick a movie or a director, I’ll write about them for you. In fact, I’ll do one for each month you subscribe and even dedicate the post to you.
  4. For $5 a month, you basically get some major power. As a Big B&S’er, I’ll write an entire week on any subject you’d like. Every month, if you’d like.

Wow, what a mystery film. Marijuana Man claims to be from 1968. But if you’re a history nerd or just someone who watched a lot of weed documentaries, you’ll know that the Drug Enforcement Administration wasn’t actually established by President Nixon until 1973. Did the filmmakers somehow possess a psychic link to future federal bureaucracy? Did a time-traveling narc fly a 70s chopper back to a 1968 pot farm?

But who cares? This has a wild man just farming his crop and avoiding that helicopter while trying to win over a young lady with his kind bud. And you get some jammy music from a band called Airhead.

They’re not the 1990s band that was also known as Jefferson Airhead. Or the movie.

Marijuana Man — and that’s what I’m calling him — goes ham on a mushroom while sharing a joint with another hirsute individual. By the end of their session, they’re just lying in the grass.

But all good things must end. A woman doing a tarot spread foresees that Marijuana Man is living in a world that just can’t last, up against people he doesn’t even know he’s battling. So yeah, she may have drawn the fool, and he may have found the death card, but maybe he knows that the death draw really represents profound transformation and the natural ending of cycles. This card encourages letting go of what no longer serves you to allow for personal change.

Despite the ending, where the DEA takes him out, I get the feeling that he’ll live on through his crop. The hippie girl passes out his seeds and sends the others out into the world to plant his magic. And wow, they must have used that helicopter for the shot at the end, when everyone walks away and plants the seeds.

Preserved in the digital archives of the Prelinger Collection, Marijuana Man is a fascinating, gritty artifact of late-1960s or early-1970s independent filmmaking. Most likely shot on location in Marin or Sonoma County, this has some great looks at some early hybrids grown back in the old days. The footage itself stems from the collection of John Carlson (1951–2021), a notable San Francisco filmmaker, lighting technician, and educator who taught cinematography at the City College of San Francisco and worked for decades as a chief colorist at legendary Bay Area labs like Monaco Film and Video.

Thanks, Eddie R., for sending this my way. If anyone is reading this knows more about this movie, please reach out!

You can watch this on YouTube.

WEIRD WEDNESDAY: The Muthers (1968)

Posted on by

Kelly (Jeanne Bell, the second black Playboy Playmate in October 1969, the first to be on the cover in January 1970 — with four other black Playmates — and also the first to be on the cover by herself in October 1971; she’s also TNT Jackson) and Anggie (Rosanne Katon, Playboy Playmate September 1978; The Swinging Cheerleaders) are pirates who steal from rich tourists and give to poor people. Then, the Justice Department finds Kelly and lets her know that her sister Sandra has been taken by drug dealer Monteiro (Tony Carreon). If the pirates can get into his plantation and get info, they’ll get immunity for all their past crimes.

They break in, join up with a prisoner, Marcie (Trina Parks, Darktown Strutters), and the bad guy’s woman, Serena (Jayne Kennedy, Body and Soul), then work on blowing the base up real good. That’s because Sandra had already been killed when she tried to escape. Well, the girls try to make it out, but not everyone is on the right side.

Cirio Santiago directed this, Cyril St. James wrote it, and Dimension Pictures released it in the U.S. It’s a combination of women-in-prison and blaxploitation films. I wish it had more tension or reasons to tell you it’s a must-see, but it’s interesting for the leads all being black and otherwise. It has long scenes of padding when you want all the madness of a WIP film. The chase kicks some of that off, but this seems to have all of the ingredients of a firecracker — speaking of Firecracker, that’s a much better Santiago film — but then the fuse sputters.

You can watch this on Tubi.

APRIL MOVIE THON DAY 15: Head (1968)

Posted on by

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Adam Hursey is a pharmacist specializing in health informatics by day, but his true passion is cinema. His current favorite films are Back to the Future, Stop Making Sense, and In the Mood for Love. He has written articles for Film East and The Physical Media Advocate, primarily examining older films through the lens of contemporary perspectives. He is usually found on Letterboxd, where he mainly writes about horror and exploitation films. You can follow him on Letterboxd or Instagram at ashursey. His April Movie Thon list is here.

April 15: TV to Movies — Let’s decry the lack of originality in Hollywood. But first, let’s write about a movie that started as a TV show.

“Pleasure, the inevitable byproduct of our civilization. A new world where our only preoccupation will be…how to amuse itself. The tragedy of your times, my young friends, is that you might get exactly what you want.”–some random guy leading The Monkees through some sort of factory. Was this the factory where The Monkees were initially manufactured?

I was a huge fan of The Monkees during their, thanks to MTV rerunning their television show, resurgence in the mid 1980s. I quickly scooped up any cassette tape I could find. On a road trip back to Louisiana from Ohio, I subjected my poor aunt to their debut record on a loop. Looking back, I’m surprised that she didn’t intentionally drive off into a ditch after the seventh time hearing Davy Jones warble I Wanna Be Free.

I did not have any idea that The Monkees were considered a prefabricated cash in on Beatlemania. Even after purchasing a replica magazine originally published in the 1960s, where the group was dubbed The Pre-Fab Four, it never occurred to me that The Monkees could possibly be seen as subpar artists.

My love for The Monkees did not die out when their second wave of fame ended perhaps prematurely after more intra-band disputes (turns out the relationships among the members were often volatile). As a teenager, I was an avid VHS collector. I loved receiving those catalogs in the mail from Movies Unlimited. And it was through one of those catalogs that I discovered The Monkees starred in a major motion picture (co-written by Jack Nicholson no less) entitled Head. The VHS was a striking yellow. The members of The Monkees seemingly suspended in mid-air, with some sort of spiral in the background. I immediately mailed in my order form, anxiously awaiting this tape to be sent to me.

After watching Head, I instantly began gaslighting myself into thinking that the film was good. Great even. Sure, it was different from any other film I had seen up to that point. There was no plot. The songs were not as poppy as I was accustomed to. But this film had to be great, right? I tried to get my friends to watch it and like it. They were less than interested, not making it more than 10 minutes before insisting that I turn it off. Eventually, I began to come to the realization that I was simply fooling myself–Head was a flop.

Fast forward many years. Once I had kids of my own, I did what any good parent does–indoctinate them. Force them to like the things I liked when I was their age (not just The Monkees, but also Family Ties, Masters of the Universe and Jem and the Holograms). It worked! My daughter loved The Monkees as much as I did, only with a major crush on Davy Jones that I never had (I was more of a Peter Tork kind of guy).

And then, the unthinkable happened. Criterion released Head as part of their BBS: America Lost and Found boxset. And if it was worthy of inclusion in The Criterion Collection, surely that meant that the film was indeed the cinematic masterpiece I always deep down inside knew that it was.

After we watched all of the episodes of The Monkees, my daughter and I watched Head. I warned her that it was a bit surreal and did not have much of a plot. She said she enjoyed parts of it, particularly the scene between Davy Jones and Toni Basil, set to Daddy’s Song, an upbeat tune about a deadbeat father. That scene was always a favorite of mine too when I was younger.

But as I watched the film, I was awestruck. Everything was right there in front of me the whole time. Head was The Monkees suicide attempt. A chance to unshackle themselves from their teenage girl fanbase and embrace the counterculture. To be seen as more than four guys brought together by a television producer. They were true artists and musicians. The songs were perhaps the best songs in their entire catalog. But what should have been their opportunity to burst out of the literal and figurative box turned out to be a financial failure. The Beatles could go to India and return changed people, but The Monkees would forever be a band who did not play their own instruments on their records (even though they later did. And nobody seems to care that The Beach Boys (minus Brian Wilson) hardly played instruments on Pet Sounds).

Watching Head today, I realized how much of the film entered my daily vernacular. There are so many lines from the film I say quite often: “That song is pretty white” (Frank Zappa’s retort to Davy Jones after Daddy’s Song), “And the same thing goes for Christmas” (Michael Nesmith’s response after berating surprise birthday parties), “Nobody ever lends money to a man with a sense of humor” (Peter’s advice to Davy in the bathroom where Davy is experiencing issues with a psychedelic mirror). 

Am I probably still overrating Head all these years later? Maybe. Am I crazy for preferring this soundtrack album over anything The Beatles produced? Definitely. At any rate, The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame will remain a joke until The Monkees are inducted. My playlist will remain jam packed with plenty of tunes from The Monkees. And if I ever need to reach for a comfort movie that features the assassination of a Viet Cong officer, I need to long no further.

WEIRD WEDNESDAY: The Libertine (1968)

Posted on by

In the rigid, Catholic-guilt-soaked landscape of late 60s Italy, a widow wasn’t supposed to do much besides wear black, weep over a portrait of her departed husband, and perhaps consult a priest about her loneliness. But Mimi (the ethereal, wide-eyed Catherine Spaak) isn’t interested in the script society wrote for her. When her husband, Franco, kicks the bucket, he leaves behind more than just a grieving widow; he leaves a secret high-tech bachelor pad equipped with a little black book, instead of sharing his fantasies with her, that he kept a lair where he could cheat on her.

Instead of burning the apartment down in a fit of rage, Mimi decides to use it as a laboratory. If Franco spent his life grading women on a scale of imagination, experience, talent and cooperation, why shouldn’t she do the same to the men of Italy?

Now, in the place where her husband sinned while striving to keep her pure, everything changes.

Directed by Pasquale Festa Campanile, best known for his commedia all’italiana like Il merlo maschio,  When Women Had Tails and When Women Lost Their Tails, as well as the harrowing Hitch-Hike, this is about a woman going from an affection-negative marriage to finding love — or lust — everywhere.

Luckily, she finds the perfect partner in Dr. Carlo De Marchi (Jean-Louis Trintignant), a man who can match her kink for kink, but more importantly, wants to connect with her outside of the bedroom. Other conquests include Philippe Leroy as a tennis instructor who can’t get aroused when she’s the one who comes on to him; Italian Western tough guy Luigi Pistilli; Pistilli’s The Great Silence co-star Frank Wolff playing a dentist; Renzo Montagnani, who was Maluc in Campanile’s caveman nudie cuties and the man who would marry Black Emanuelle for real, Gabriele Tinti, playing a man who thinks Mimi is a prostitute. The biggest problem is that she instantly sleeps with her husband’s business partner, Sandro (Gigi Proietti), who claims her as his property and even refers to her as a whore, as mentioned above.

I love this movie because somehow, it came out in 1968 Italy and yet represented a step forward — not always, I get that there are still issues in this, but what do you expect from a male-made Italian sex comedy? — in the way Italian films, much less Italians, saw a woman owning her sexuality.

On Movie-Censorship.com, I found a line about this movie that I love: “Without drifting into the vulgar, she experiences various sexual styles until she discovers her favorite fetish in piggyback.” That’s why in Germany, this was called Huckepack (other amazing titles include The Aristotle Perversion; Sekso Manyak or Kadının İntikamı or Garip Duygular (Good Sex or The Woman’s Revenge or Strange Feelings in Turkish); Änka i trosor (Widow In Panties in Swedish); Una viuda desenfrenada (An Unbridled Widow in Russian, which is a nice play on the position and conceit of this film) or the best of all these titles, The Era of Female Dominence.

In its native Italy, this flick is La Matriarca. Think about that word. The Matriarch. It drips with the heavy, incense-laden weight of the Italian family unit. It suggests a woman taking the throne, perhaps with a rolling pin in one hand and a rosary in the other. But then, it hits the States. Audubon Films, owned by Radley Metzger, knew they had a movie with Spaak nude, a blonde Italian sex goddess with eyes that could melt a Cinecittà camera lens, so instead of making a statement, they went with The Libertine.

To the Italian audience, she’s a woman reclaiming her power within the structure of her life; to the US grindhouse and art-house crowd, she’s just another bad girl on a sexual odyssey. Italy gives us the status, and America gives us the sin. Actually, Italy gives us a lot of sin, but I digress.

Audubon Films also gave us way more nudity, mostly more of Fabienne Dali from Kill, Baby… Kill!

I don’t like that Dr. Carlo becomes such a jerk at the end of the movie, because I would much rather he came to Mimi on her terms and wasn’t so rude. There was no need to destroy the secret sex apartment, which is incredible and could only exist in Italian movies. That pad is a masterpiece of 60s Italian production design, a space where the rules of the outside world don’t apply.

WEIRD WEDNESDAY: The Laughing Woman (1968)

Posted on by

I’ve spent years staring at the iconography of this film, specifically that haunting, colossal sculpture of a woman whose thighs form a gateway to a rolling skeleton. You worry, after seeing imagery that potent, that the film itself will be a hollow vessel. But The Laughing Woman isn’t just a movie; it’s a vibrant, pop-art masterwork that actually manages to be even stranger and better than that one bravura moment.

Maria (Dagmar Lassander) works in the office of Dr. Sayer (Philippe Leroy), who claims to be working in philanthropy but really believes in an increasingly wild series of conspiracies like how every woman in the world is against him and they’re all collecting the sperm of men so they can get rid of them after harvesting their life-giving sperm and that governments are planning on making men obsolete.

After having a drink with Sayer, Maria wakes up chained to a bed and his prisoner, being told that he can make her do anything he wants, and when he’s done, like so many other women, he will just get rid of her, move on and do it all over again.

Directed and written by Piero Schivazappa, this movie takes the expected BDSM idea that an independent woman is going to enjoy pushing her boundaries and fall for her captor and instead flips it like a kink-friendly Arabian Nights, as Maria keeps talking and pushing and prodding Sayer, making him question who he is and what he’s doing.

The world that this happens inside is the kind of future that we were promised and never got, a push-button retro tomorrow that never got here, filled with starkness, strange human forms and swimming pools that are either havens for torture or passion. There’s also a strange bed that Maria soon learns allows Sayer to sleep next to her even when she thinks she’s all alone. And then he makes her make love — with his direction — to his exact mannequin duplicate.

How strange it is that there’s a major inversion before the end of this movie, between who is in charge and who controls who and the traditional top and bottom roles and wow, when Maria pulls off her short wig — Sayer had previously chopped all of her hair — to reveal her flowing locks again, it’s beyond perfect. I was ready for what would happen, but somehow still so happy that it all played out this way, because yes, it had to play out this way.

Sometimes, style and substance fight it out, argue, and no one wins. And other times, they just decide to stop fighting and start fucking, and the results are glorious. This would be that time.

WEIRD WEDNESDAY: The Hellcats (1968)

Posted on by

The Hellcats bury Big Daddy, who was killed by their mob contact, Mr. Adrian (Robert F. Slatzer, who directed this as well as Bigfoot), when he learned that the crook was also a snitch for Detective Dave Chapman. All of these relationships are symbolized at the start of the film — the biker gang is burying their boss while the cops and the crooks watch from a distance.

Adrian decides to kill off Chapman when he’s on a date with his fiancée Linda (Dee Duffy, who was a Slaygirl and Miss June in the Matt Helm movies The Ambushers and Murderer’s Row). Dave’s brother, Monte (Ross Hagen, who was also in The Sidehackers), returns from the war to learn what happened. He and Linda decide to act like a biker couple and get revenge.

He does so by getting drawn and quartered longer than the leader of the gang, Snake (Sonny West, a member of Elvis’ Memphis Mafia). This earns him the right to have sex with Sheila (one-and-done actress Sharyn Kinzie) and brings our protagonists into the gang’s scam to bring back drugs from Mexico.

Tom Hanson, who directed Zodiac Killer, shows up here as Mongoose. Gus Trikonis, who made Nashville Woman, The Evil, She’s Dressed to Kill, and more, is Scorpio. Tony Lorea, who plays Six-Pack and also acted in Supercock, went on to be the assistant director of Sweet Sixteen, The Glove and Ladies Night. Was this entire gang made up of exploitation movie directors? Where’s Bud Cardos?

Agonizando en el crimen (1968)

Posted on by

Jean’s (Juan Logar) fiancée Jacqueline (Annie Sinigalia) dies of a strange ailment in the middle of surgery. On their wedding day, no less! How does this happen? How does one decide to schedule surgery on the same day as a wedding? Who can say, but Jean decides to stop being a medical student and start attacking his former classmates, cutting off their hands so they can never operate again.

The dude is doing all of this four years before Dr. Phibes, too.

Directed by Enrique López Eguiluz (Frankenstein’s Bloody Terror, Santo frente a la muerte) and written by star Juan Logar, who also produced and composed the music, this has some grisly murders and some gore, more than you’d expect from Spain under Franco in 1968.

The detective trying to solve this case? It’s one of his earliest roles, credited as David Molba, but that’s Paul Naschy. 

This feels more slasher than giallo. It’s set in France — not Spain, as there’s no way the government would allow that — and at least they set up the doomed romance well in the beginning.

You can watch this on YouTube.

Cinematic Void January Giallo 2026: A Hyena In the Safe (1968)

Posted on by

Editor’s note: Cinematic Void will be playing this movie tonight on Friday, January 18 at 8:00 PM at The Frida Cinema in Santa Ana, CA. It’s free and you can read about the film here. For more information, visit Cinematic Void.

A Hyena In the Safe might have the best-looking fashions I’ve ever seen in a giallo. Oh man, glitter eyeshadow, furs, striped suits, insane patterns — I’m in love.

Four thieves — Klaus from Germany, Albert (Sandro Pizzochero, So Sweet, So Dead) from France, Juan from Spain and Carina from Tangiers — have met up in what they think is an isolated castle to split up some diamonds. That said, their dead boss’s wife, Anna, is throwing a party. Complicating matters further, all five keys must be used at the same time to open the vault, so everyone has to keep getting along, even when Albert’s new girlfriend, Jeanine, annoys everyone. And when people start getting killed, how will anyone get their reward?

Cesare Canevari is probably better known for his scummy side, with movies like A Man for Emmanuelle, Killing of the Flesh and The Gestapo’s Last Orgy on his resume.

I kind of love these pre-Argento gialli that haven’t started aping his style and instead are all over the place in their influences. This is the type of movie I wish had shown up in Vinegar Syndrome’s last Forgotten Gialli set, because I want more people to see it. It’s got the brightest colors, the furriest upholstery, the most theatrical makeup and a soundtrack that swings. It is, well, everything.