What if Ray Dennis Steckler made a gumshoe movie?

What if he starred in it — using his real name and not Cash Flagg — as private eye Charlie Smith?

And what if he were hired by Big Mack, who is played by Bernard Fein who created Hogan’s Heroes, to find a heroin-stealing cat burglar named Carrie Erskine who is, of course, played by Carolyn Brandt, Steckler’s wife?

Also known as Deadlocked and Super Cool, this has all of the Steckler players in it, like Gary Kent, Joseph Brado, Herb Robins and Ron Haydock. But I loved seeing Steckler acting like a tough guy and getting all sorts of women when he’s not fighting various bad guys. It was almost called The Last Original “B” Movie which is a funny name but Body Fever seemed to stick.

Oh yes, that is Coleman Francis, the director of The Beast of Yucca Flats, The Skydivers and Red Zone Cuba. Steckler had just completed filming the last scene and when walking to his car, he saw Francis drunk and lying in the gutter. Steckler felt so bad about Francis’s condition that, even though he had finished work on the movie, he offered Francis a role. Steckler added some scenes just to give Francis some work and money, which he gave to him in advance. Steckler and his crew were astonished when Francis showed up for work the next day sober, clean-shaven and nicely attired. Steckler had wanted him to play the part of a disheveled bum, but Francis had used the advance pay to buy a decent second-hand suit, a shave and a haircut.

Kevin Murphy of Mystery Science Theater 3000 said of his movie, “Coleman Francis uses edits like blunt instruments. He uses blunt instruments like blunt instruments. His major themes are death, hatefulness, death, pain, and death. He looks like Curly Howard possessed by demons from Hell. He tried to pass off Lake Mead as the Caribbean Sea. His films have the moral compass of David Berkowitz.”

He plays the only person Charlie trusts, a laundromat owner who went out of business when his customers kept using wooden change to get free washes. If you think that’s weird, well, Steckler wears a Gilligan hat through most of this movie.

A sequel called Bloody Jack was filmed in 1972 starring Steckler, Brandt and Robbins with Charlie discovering that all of the girls he’s dated are being killed, It was shot but never edited or scored.

You can watch this on YouTube.

This is the first appearance in a Russ Meyer movie of Charles Napier. He plays Harry Thompson, a California border sheriff and marijuana smuggler who also somehow — spoiler warning — comes back from the dead to die again in Supervixens.

But as for this movie, it starts with a narration that blames marijuana for so many evils in society. Harry has ignored all that as he Harry works his sheriff job in between illegal activity. He lives at the site of a close silver mine with his English nurse girlfriend Cherry (Linda Ashton). As for Raquel (Larissa Ely), she’s a writer who has an interest in sexually pleasuring men. The two women learn of one another but Harry doesn’t want them to make love for some reason. When we first see Raquel, she’s in bed with Harry’s partner Enrique (Bert Santos). The two men work for Mr. Franklin (Frank Bolger), the town’s main politician, to move drugs. One of their other associates, the Apache (John Milo) is screwing everyone over. Franklin asks for him to be killed, but he gets away and steals Harry’s Jeep.

Now, Enrique knows too much and he must be killed. But the Apache gets to him — and Mr. Franklin — first. Raquel finds his body and is so upset, she must be hospitalized. Good news. Her nurse is Cherry and they finally get together to make love, all while Harry and the Apache do the exact opposite and kill one another.

But ah — it was all a story that Raquel was writing. This strange ending may be because a lot of the film’s footage was accidentally ruined by the color lab. Roger Ebert said, “The result is that audiences don’t even realize anything is missing; a close analysis might reveal some cavernous gaps in the plot, and it is a little hard to figure out exactly how (or if) all the characters know each other, but Meyer’s subjective scenes are so inventive and his editing so confident that he simply sweeps the audience right along with him. Cherry, Harry and Raquel! is possibly the only narrative film ever made without a narrative.” Uschi Digard, the lover of the Apache, was also added Linda Ashton quit and you have to admit that she adds a lot to the film. Meyer claims the other actress quit over her pomeranians ruining the carpets of the motel they were staying in and the owner getting upset.

He also said, “The picture is the most successful film I have on cable television-or hotel-vision-because you never have to come in at the beginning. It doesn’t matter. It could be a loop.”

It also has one of the first instances of mainstream full frontal male nudity, which made it a controversial movie all the way back in 1969.

Inspired by the true story of Raymond Fernandez and Martha Beck, the notorious “lonely hearts killers” of the 1940s, The Honeymoon Killers tells the tale with Tony Lo Bianco and Shirley Stoler, in her film debut, as the leads.

Ray starts the film by seducing Martha and stealing money from her, but it turns out that she may be every but his equal, using her wits to help him con and even kill numerous women from lonely hearts ads.

From relationship to relationship, Ray promises to never cheat on Martha, but there’s no way that he can keep up the con. Along the way, every one that crosses their path dies, often horribly.

Originally to be directed by Martin Scorsese, who was fired from the film, it was taken over by writer Leonard Kastle, who only created this one film. Named by François Truffaut as his “favorite American film,” it looks more like a grim documentary than an exploitation film.

American-International Pictures was going to distribute this, even making ad materials, but dropped it due to the film’s “extremely gruesome and misanthropic” tone. Their loss — it’s a work of art.

I’m enthused by the fact that an ad appeared in Variety at some point in the late 70’s announcing a sequel. Although never made, the story would have involved an imagined death row conjugal visit between Ray and Martha , resulting in the prison birth of brother/sister twins who were separated at birth. Years later, the pair meets and becomes adult murderers/lovers, never suspecting that they are siblings. This movie needs to be made.

Boot Hill (the Italian title means The Hill Made of Boots) is the last movie in a trilogy that began with God Forgives…I Don’t and was followed by Ace High. Taking advantage of star Terence Hill’s fame, it was re-released as Trinity Rides Again.

It was directed and written by Giuseppe Colizzi, who also made the other films in this trilogy, as well as All the Way Boys with Hill and Bud Spencer; Run, Joe, Run and Switch.

Hill plays Cat Stevens and Spencer is Hutch Bessy, who along with George Eastman as the mute Baby Doll are all somewhat friends and partners by the end. But to get there, Cat is shot and left for dead by a gang and nursed back to health by the circus of Thomas (Woody Strode), which includes can can dancers, dwarves and Mami (Lionel Stander), the dress-wearing manager of all of them, which ain’t easy, because when they met, it was murder.

Beyond the bad guy having the name Honey Fisher, he’s played by Victor Buono, which is quite a treat. There’s a strange dual look to this film, with the circus sections filled with color and near surrealism — they were shot by the movie’s original director Romolo Guerrieri (Johnny Yuma, The Sweet Body of Deborah, L’ Ultimo Guerriero) — while most of the film’s look is quite dark and moody.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Also known as Sundance and the Kid and Sundance Cassidy and Butch the Kid, an attempt to win the audience of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, this movie was directed by Duccio Tessari, who wrote A Fistful of Dollars and would go on to direct A Pistol for Ringo. Its story comes from Ennio Flaiano, who wrote ten movies with Fellini, and has a screenplay by Tessari and Giorgio Salvioni (The Tenth Victim).

In the U.S. version, everyone gets an American name: Giuliano Gemma is John Wade; Nino Benvenuti becomes Robert Neuman; Sydne Rome is Karen Blake and director Tessari is called Arthur Pitt.

Country mouse Ted Mulligan (Nino Benvenuti, a former boxer) and city mouse Monty (Giuliano Gemma) inherit $300,000 if they can live together for six months.As soon as Ted arrives, he insults local tough “Bad Jim” Williams (Robert Huerta) who responds by burning down his brother’s house. Soon, the two of them are doing odd jobs, including robbing banks and kidnapping Rossella (Sydne Rome, What?, Some Girls Do) who they both fall for.

It’s all rather goofy and really a predecessor of the sillier Italian westerns that were soon to come riding into town.

Directed by Michael Cort, who wrote it with Alistair McKenzie and Christopher Neame, The Love Factor is also known as Zeta One. It’s about secret agent James Word (Robin Hawdon) telling his boss W’s Ann (Yutte Stensgaard, Some Girls Do) about his latest adventure just as we also meet Zeta (Dawn Addams, The Vault of Horror) and her cadre of alien women from the planet Angvia — get it, it’s an anagram for vagina — who are trying to find new girls for their planet while also fighting off Major Bourden (James Robertson Justice) and his henchman Swyne (Charles Hawtrey).

Zeta has a formidable force of extraordinary magnitude, including Brigitte Skay (Isabella Duchess of the Devils), Anna Gael (Nana), Wendy Lingham, Valerie Leon (Queen Kong), Kirsten Betts (Twins of Evil) and Carol Hawkins (The Body Stealers).

Released in America by Film Ventures International four years after it played England as Zeta One, it was first shown as The Love Slaves and the next year was renamed The Love Factor. It was produced by Tigon and Vernon Sewell directed some of the scenes.

This is like Bond, Barbarella and pop art mixed with pasties, go go boots and the kind of humor that has the secret agent show up late and just want to make love to the many, many aliens he’s battling. It doesn’t make much sense, but who cares? It starts with a thirty-minute strip poker scene that really goes nowhere as well, but when you’re having fun, who is looking at the run time?

Marooned first went into production in 1965 with Frank Capra directing from a screenplay by Walter Newman. They couldn’t get the budget they needed to make the movie, which by the time John Sturges directed this in 1969 ended up being $8 million.

You know how everyone talks about the moon launch being faked? This is the opposite of that, as the people making this wanted it to look as realistic as what they saw on TV every night. NASA, North American Aviation and Philco-Ford created the film’s hardware, which included what would become Skylab, the headsets that would later be worn by the launch crews, the Mission Operations Control Room at Johnson Space Center in Houston and the Air Force Launch Control Center at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.

Commander Jim Pruett (Richard Crenna), “Buzz” Lloyd (Gene Hackman) and Clayton “Stoney” Stone (James Franciscus) are the first crew of an experimental space station. Five months into their mission, Lloyd starts to act strangely and they decide to go back to Earth. The problem? They don’t have enough fuel, leaving them, well, marooned.

NASA Director of Manned Spaceflight Charles Keith (Gregory Peck) and Chief Astronaut Ted Dougherty (David Janssen) argue over whether or not the men can be saved. The President — only heard and not seen, it’s John Forsythe — says that the American people need to see these men saved, so a rescue mission is on while the astronaut’s wives — Lee Grant, Mariette Hartley and Nancy Kovack — watch as their men slowly die in space.

As a kid, this always upset me with the scene of Richard Crenna drifting into space to his doom. The nice thing is that Russia ends up working with the U.S. to save the men.

Based on a novel by Martin Caidin — who also wrote Cyborg, the book that was adapted by The Six Million Dollar Man — this won an Oscar for Best Visual Effects. But what’s really interesting about this movie to me is that it somehow — despite its Columbia Pictures A-list status in 1969 — it would one day be owned by Film Ventures International and renamed Space Travelers. That’s why this movie — one with three Academy Award winners in Gregory Peck, Gene Hackman and Lee Grant — would end up on Mystery Science Theater 3000.

I love that FVI put all the care of a basic font over a space image to replace the Marooned title in the credits.

This movie was also a major flop when it played in theaters but at least there was a Super 8 home version so you could watch astronauts run out of air in the comfort of home!

You can watch this on Tubi.

The Terror With Cross-Eyes was directed by Steno, whose sons are Enrico and Carlo Vanzina, who together kicked off a new wave of giallo in the 1980s with Nothing Underneath. In this film — written by the director with Giulio Scarnicci and Raimondo Vianello — is about Mino (Enrico Montesano), Giacinto (Alighiero Noschese) and Mirella (Isabella Biagini) staging a murder to become famous. The problem is that when they arrive at Mirella’s apartment, there’s already the dead body of her roommate Margaretha (Maria Baxa).

As they watch the police take the body away, they run, only to be pursued by Commissario Pigna (Francis Blanche). Like good giallo protagonists, they decide to investigate the murder themselves and find that there are connections to organized crime. Anyone that has come close to Margaretha is also being killed by — as the title says — a man with crossed eyes.

Italian comedy is not usually comedy for foreigners. Consider this a crime comedy then with some small hints at giallo. This was lost for some time — and according to Mark David Welsh that may be because of a controversial Manson Family joke — but now it’s online and easier to watch. Sadly, it doesn’t have much to recommend, unless you — like me — are a giallo completist.

You can watch this on YouTube.

Six years after committing a murder and getting away with it — they used to pick up strangers at bars and play sex games with them while taking pictures, but one of them accidentally dies — Lea (Marília Branco), Andrea (Roberto Bisacco) and Vanni (Daniel Sola) get a photo of them that proves they are guilty. They pay the blackmail — they’re all rich enough now — but the messages keep coming. Who is it? Is it one of the three? Old friend Carletto (Lino Capolicchio) who is back in town? So cosa hai fatto l’estate scorsa?

The English translation of this movie is Shame on you, swine! and the film really shows how empty and pointless the lives of the idle rich are. They would have hated Carletto even if they didn’t think he was the one holding their past crimes over their collective heads; he’s a left wing radical artist who hates the capitalism that has given them whatever life they sleepwalk through.

Directed by Mauro Severino, who wrote the story with Giuseppe D’Agata, this film comes before the giallo form was set by Argento. At this point, they could be anything from a Hitchcock ripoff to a movie like this that uses crime and sleaze to poke at the ways of Milan in 1969.

Based around the nursery rhyme “Giro giro tondo” (“Ring Around the Rosie”), this Ennio Morricone soundtrack makes this even better.

You can watch this on The Cave of Forgotten Films.