Tag Archives: 1969

Angel, Angel, Down We Go (1969), aka Cult of the Damned (1970)

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Poet, novelist, playwright and screenwriter Robert Thom is someone the B&S About Movies crowd knows best for Roger Corman’s quest to beat Rollerball to the theaters, with an adaptation (which Charles B. Griffith* doctored) of Ib Melchoir’s short story “The Racer” as Death Race 2000 (1975). Thom’s Hollywood (or is that Hollyweird) resume goes back a bit further, with the “teensploitation” screenplays for All the Fine Young Cannibals and an adaptation of Jack Kerouac’s The Subterraneans (both 1960). His screenwriting debut, Complusion (1959) — in which he was rewritten and not credited — was based on the infamous Leopold and Loeb murders and starred Orson Wells. (For Don Kirshner, he’d write the 1975, Kim Milford-starring Song of the Succubus.)

Thom’s next teen-oriented romp was the more “hep” counterculture-rock flick Wild in the Streets (1968), based on his short story “The Day It All Happened, Baby!”. When that American International Pictures’ $700,000-budgeted project cleared $4 million in drive-in receipts, Thom was given an opportunity to direct his first film, which he also wrote — and is the film we’re reviewing today: Angel, Angel, Down We Go.

Is it a counterculture drama . . . or a horror flick? Hey, whatever AIP – American International Pictures needs it to be to make a buck.

As with Wild in the Streets, Thom’s sole directing credit centers around a disillusioned rock star; its genesis was an unproduced stage-play of the same name written as a vehicle for his then wife, Janice Rule (better known for her ’70s guest-starring TV work than her films), who later became the wife of Ben Gazzara (The Neptune Factor, Road House).

By the time the script made it to the big screen, five-time Academy Award nominated and winning actress Jennifer Jones (won for 1944’s The Song of Bernadette) was cast as the affluent Mrs. Astrid Steele, the downtrodden wife of an airline magnate (think a gay Howard Hughes) and mother of the overweight and emotionally troubled Tara (folk musician, Broadway musical actress, and ’70s TV actress Holly Near in her feature film debut; she was Barbara Pilgrim in Slaughterhouse-Five) who becomes involved with Bogart Peter Stuyvesant, a charismatic rock star who takes advantage of the Steele family’s damaged emotional state to integrate himself and his Manson-like clique into their lives.

So, for his rock star, Thom cast . . . well, remember how Ben Affleck and Jennifer Aniston experienced a career boost based on their marriages? Such was the case of struggling Ohio-to-New York-based rock singer Jordan Christopher.

After his unsuccessful years as the leader of the doo-wop-inspired the Fascinations in the early ’60s (they recorded a few singles; here and here), Christopher came to join New York’s the Wild Ones, which replaced Joey Dee and the Starlighters¹ (of which Joe Pesci was once a member; without Pesci, they starred in Hey, Let’s Twist!) as the house band at New York’s famed Peppermint Lounge (where that movie was filmed). After that successful residency, the Wild Ones booked the same gig at the more chichi club, Arthur, operated by Richard Burton’s soon-to-be ex-wife Sybil Williams, aka Burton; Burton owned the club.

As with Ben and Jen after her, Sybil found her fame via her marriage to Richard Burton, who was a huge screen star at the time. And when Sybil came to become involved with — and within a month of the band’s residency, married — Jordan Christopher, his “star” began to rise, as well. Thanks to the pre-Internet gossip press and scandal sheets of the day, not only did Arthur transform into a “hot” club that decimated the Peppermint Lounge out of existence, Jordan Christopher’s the Wild Ones signed a record deal with United Artists Records to release the live-recorded The Arthur Sound (that’s Christopher at cover right; that’s Sybil hoisted on the band’s shoulders).

However, after that lone album, and his “image” hotter than ever, Christopher left the Wild Ones to become a “star” in Hollywood. An accomplished stage actor in minor productions back in New York, Christopher booked supporting roles in the forgotten late ’60s flicks The Fat Spy (a really awful “beach movie”; the worst of the pack, which featured the Wild Ones), Return of the Seven (the awful nobody-wanted-it bomb-sequel to western classic The Magnificent Seven), and The Tree (a kidnap drama). Angel, Angel, Down We Go, his fourth film, was Christopher’s leading man debut. In addition to recording the soundtrack to the film, UA signed Christopher as a solo artist for the album Has the Knack; without Christopher, the Wild Ones recorded the first, original version of “Wild Thing,” which was penned by Chip Taylor (brother of actor Jon Voight) specifically for the band (the Troggs version is the one you know).

The novelization/image WonderBook eBay.

So, since you probably never heard of Jordan Christopher, you have probably guessed the fame-cum-career by marriage and connection to the Richard Burton dynasty doesn’t not a solo career or a hit film make.

As with any of today’s cable TV-cum-Internet social media influencers, Jordan Christopher’s Kardashianesque fame, well . . . down, down it went, as the all-important Los Angeles Times and New York Times referred to his leading-man debut film Angel, Angel, Down We Go as “a pretentious mess” and “an unmitigated financial disaster,” respectively; the NY Times’ review was titled “The dime-store way to make a movie and money.”

Actress Holly Near, already Rubensque (think of a ’60s Ricki Lake of Hairspray; chunky-cute), put on even more weight for her debut film role, had hoped the film would transition her out of stage work, referred to the film as “it was trash.” She left film at that point and retreated into stage and limited TV guest-star work.. And it’s no loss, for Near’s no prize in the acting department; her binge eating scene at the coming-out party is still cringe-inducing; she even gorges on the scenery throughout. The gist behind party: Near’s Tara Steele turned 18 and returns from boarding school; her parents hired Bogart Peter Stuyvesant and the Rabbit Habbit to play the party . . . and Tara falls in love.

While Christopher never publicly spoke of the film, he retreated into stage work as an actor and theatre operator — not appearing on the big screen again until Star 80 and Brainstorm (both 1983). Truth be told, Christopher’s departure into theatre was no big loss to Hollywood, either; he’s simple awful in both films marking his return — and truly annoying as a childish/horny, unrealistic “scientist” in the latter. And he’s pure ham — by lack of a thespian skill set, not an acting choice — here, and you see why the undercarded Roddy McDowell, and not Christopher, had the career.

As for Robert Thom, who actually was a decent writer in the low-budget realms, came to write the ’70 gangster romps Bloody Mama and Crazy Mama for Roger Corman — but he never directed another film.

More bogus bands to be had with our “Ten Bands Made Up for Movies” featurette.

And Jennifer Jones, starring here as a former porn actress whose mainstream Hollywood “movie star” career is on the skids, playing up an overtly, sexed-up homage to Gloria Swanson’s Norma Desmond in the noir classic, Sunset Boulevard (1950), well, just what was she thinking? Jennifer couldn’t have possibly been hoping for a repeat on the lessons of social obscenity with Madame Bovary (1949), in which she starred? Doing an AIP grindhouse flick is a long, hard fall for Jones — who was long-time married to David O. Selnick, the producer who gave us the original King Kong**. Sadly, this was Jones’s first film after her much-publicized suicide attempt; then, later, her daughter committed suicide by jumping from a 20-story window.

To see an Oscar-caliber actress quoting the likes of . . . “I made thirty stag films and never faked an orgasm,” “In my heart of hearts, I’m a sexual clam,” “Do you want me, or do you want my daughter?,” and “You’re a bloody, sadistic dyke” . . . you’re sorry and embarrassed for her. So, with the one-two punch of her performance slammed by critics, and her daughter’s later suicide, one can see why Jones walked away from the biz, only to return one more time in Irwin Allen’s The Towering Inferno (1974). And, in the end, out of her mere 26 films, Angel, Angel, Down We Go is the one film of Jones’s that trash cinema lovers care about because, well, video fringe fandom is all about the trashy.

Meanwhile, American International Pictures wasn’t about to flush $2 million down the toilet. So, courtesy of Jordan Christopher’s Manson-like rocker, and with Charles Manson all over the press as result of the Tate-LaBianca Murders of August 8-9, 1969 (which fueled Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time . . . in Hollywood), AIP retitled and reissued the film as Cult of the Damned on a double bill with the first entry in Hammer Studios’ “Karnstein Trilogy,” The Vampire Lovers. And the Los Angeles Times slammed it, again, as “a terrible piece of trash.”

As the Los Angeles Times’ review stated in their negative review of this tale centered around the overweight debutante daughter of a wealthy couple who falls in with a tripped out, skydiving-addicted rock star and his reactionary clan, “. . . it can never be said to bore.” Hey, we never said bad films can’t be entertaining . . . well, except the ones with Jennifer Aniston and Jennifer Lopez, for the two-Jens — that’s just movie hell in a hand basket (and their bitching when they’re not “nominated” come awards season, doesn’t endear them to anyone; at least Holly Near has reality on her side).

The Barry Mann-produced soundtrack/image Discogs.

Valley of the Dolls (1967), the trashy, celluloid doppelganger to Angel, Angel, Down We Go, is in no way a good movie nor a classic; however, that Patty Duke-starrer is an undeniable guilty pleasure. And Angel, Angel, Down We Go so wants to be that Jacqueline Susann-adapted flick, but only ends up being even abysmal-trashier than the Roger Ebert-written and Russ Meyer-directed ripoff sequel Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (1970). And let’s not forget: Susann called the adaptation of her own book, “a piece of shit.” So that gives you a good idea on the low-grade, non-quality of Robert Thom’s sole directing effort. I’d even take the critical comparison a wee-bit lower, down to Peter Carpenter’s trashy, sexually-manipulating lounge singer in Point of Terror (1971). (If Christopher didn’t star here, Carpenter could have filled the role, admirably; hey, anything to bring back that red-fringe Elvis get-up, Peter! We recently honored Peter with a two-fer review-career blowout with Vixen! and Love Me Like I Do.)

Then again, if you’re into these counterculture LSD flicks of yore and enjoy the whacked-out realities of Skidoo (1968), The Phynx (1970), or the “fucked up future” of Gas-s-s (1970), then there’s something in the frames of this symbolism feast of the stoned senses. For lost . . . somewhere . . . in the frames is a statement on the nihilism of wealth and celebrity. But my inner being tells me even Kant and Nietzsche would reject Robert Thom’s tales as poppycock . . . once the house maid is exposed as a lesbian and the husband’s bisexuality come to light (he’s shower be-boppin’ the butler). And never in the writings of those metaphysical thinkers, did they ever dream up the Machiavellian likes of the Rabbit Habbit, a band which features Lou Rawls (in his feature film debut) and Roddy McDowall . . . with McDowall’s Santoro spewing his nihilistic sociopolitical ejaculate over his love for carrots. Yes, Cornelius is “turned on” by veggies. Read into that as you may, you dirty bird.

Jim? Is that you? Nope, that’s Bogart Peter Stuyvesant! Bogie, Bogie, Bogie. . . .

In the end, both the counterculture hippie masses, as well as the conservative masses (aka my parents, who got dressed up for dinner and a movie to see Valley of the Dolls, as parents did in the ’60s; mom loved the book, but HATED the movie), rejected Robert Thom’s attempt to graft the teachings of Kant and Nietzsche into the taboo-intellectual visuals of Pier Paolo Pasolini*˟. An allegorical work on the level of Pasolini’s underbelly tale of pimps and thieves in Accatone (1961) and his bourgeoisie-supernatural thriller Teorema (1968), Robert Thom’s lone directing effort, is not; it’s as inept as an inept high school production of a Tennessee Williams play.

The only real stand out of the film is Jordan Christopher (by singing, not acting) cloning a shirtless and leather pant Jim Morrison — with a touch of Iggy Pop — as our ersatz rocker belting the Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil-penned tunes (as part of Don Kirshner’s house of hits, they supplied tunes to the Monkees˟*) “Angel Angel Down We Go,” “The Fat Song,” “Hey Hey Hey and a Hi Ho,” “Lady Lady,” “Mother Lover,” and “Revelation,” which are actually pretty good tunes. Oddly enough, Lou Rawls — who reached his own solo career highs with the Top 40 ’70s hits “Lady Love” and “You’re Gonna Miss My Love,” doesn’t sing in the film.

L – R: Roddy McDowall, Jennifer Jones, Davey Davison (seated/back), Holly Near (on the spit), Jordan Christopher, and Lou Rawls — bringin’ on the pretentious symbolism.

If you read our recent review for Breaking News in Yuba County, you know that on October 7, 2020, four decades after the imprint’s closure, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer reactivated the AIP-imprint to release digital and limited theatrical releases (MGM will handle streaming while United Artists will handle the theatrical end). The studio was founded by James H. Nicholson and Samuel Z. Arkoff and all AIP releases followed the ARKOFF formula:

Action (exciting, entertaining drama)
Revolution (novel or controversial themes and ideas)
Killing (a modicum of violence)
Oratory (notable dialogue and speeches)
Fantasy (acted-out fantasies common to the audience)
Fornication (sex appeal for young adults)

So, yeah, Angel, Angel, Down We Go is a bizarre pint of an ARKOFF-crafted microbrew (bubblin’ with images of Near’s face on a guerilla, and then a lion, as part of a trip and its “message”), a libation of choice that we gulp with glee at B&S About Movies. You know us, with our celluloid schadenfreude of the Sexette (1978)˟˟ and Myna Breckenridge (1970) variety (both spiritual, washed-up actor sloppers), for that is what it’s all about, out on the video brewin’ fringes. So pair Angel, Angel, Down We Go with Robert Thom’s rock “prequel” Wild in the Streets and Mick Jagger’s decadent rock star turn in Performance (1970), toss back an ARKOFF, and pop open a bag of salty American International Psychedelic Trash Nuggets. Yum.

You can stream Angel, Angel, Down We Go on You Tube. For a cleaner, commercial-free stream, we found a PPV copy on Vudu. To get you started, we found a trailer and a copy of the 45-rpm/7″ single for the film’s title cut-theme song.

* Charles B. Griffith gave us the redneck romps Eat My Dust! and Smokey Bites the Dust; went “Jaws” with Up from the Depths and, as an actor, appeared in Hollywood Boulevard. Check out our “Top 70 Good Ol’ Boys Film List” feature with more hicksploitation-cum-redneck reviews.

** Join us for our “Kaiju Day” and “Son of Kaiju Day” review recaps as we pay homage to all manner of Kong and Godzilla movies to celebrate the release of 2021’s Kong vs. Godzilla.

*˟ We discuss Pasolini’s work in our review of the 2020 documentary Fascism on a Thread: The Strange Story of Nazisploitation Cinema.

˟* We discussion Don Kirshner’s film production career in our “Exploring: The Movies of Don Kirshner” featurette.

˟˟ Check out our “Box Office Failure” week of film reviews.

¹ Felix Cavaliere, later of the Young Rascals and the Rascals, got his start with Joey Dee & the Starlighters. He, along with Gene Conrish, have recently reactivated the Rascals (then, as with all other tours, got COVID derailed); after his stint with Joey Dee, Cavaliere formed the Young Rascals with Gene Cornish, Eddie Brigati, and Dino Danelli.

After the Rascals collapsed, they morphed into the harder rocking Bulldog, with Gene Cornish and Dino Danelli at the helm. After Bulldog’s two albums in the early ‘70s, Cornish and Danelli teamed with Wally Bryson, from the early ‘70s “power-pop” pioneers the Raspberries (also out of the same Akron, Ohio, scene as Jordan Christopher), to form Fotomaker, which issued three albums in the late, new-wave ‘70s: Fotomaker, Vis-à-vis, and Transfer Station. A Cars or Knack-like success for Fotomaker was not meant to be, even with their great, debut single, “Where Have You Been All My Life.”

While Fotomaker was going on, Felix Cavaliere — who once played with Joey Dee, mind you — formed Treasure, a harder AOR band that issued an album in 1977 — and featured Vinnie “Vincent” Cusano, later of Kiss, on lead guitar.

Dino Danelli ended up in Little Steven and the Disciples of Soul — playing alongside ex-Plasmatics bassist, Jean Beauvior. After the Raspberries, and before Fotomaker, Wally Bryson formed the hard-rock outfit Tattoo with Thom Mooney from Todd Rundgren’s the Nazz, which put out one album in 1976 on Prodigal Records (a Motown subsidiary). Thom also did time in Fuse with Rick Neilson and Tom Petersson, both later of Cheap Trick. And, the drummer in Fuse was Chip Greenman; he ended up in the Names, which doubled as faux “No False Metal” rockers the Clowns in Terror on Tour. And, of course, Cheap Trick came to be known via their first soundtrack effort, Over the Edge.

Don’t forget! We are deep into our third “Rock ‘n’ Roll Week” blowout. Yes, we’ve done this twice before, and you can catch up with our “Rock ‘n’ Roll Week” Round-Ups 1 and 2 with their full listings of all the rock flicks we’ve watched.

About the Author: You can learn more about the writings of R.D Francis on Facebook. He also writes for B&S About Movies.

The Castle of Fu Manchu (1969)

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Jess Franco, come on back to our site!

Man, Christopher Lee may rival Donald Pleasence for not being able to say no — I say this with full knowledge that the former turned from Halloween while the latter said yes to that series more than he should have — and here he played Sax Rohmer’s “yellow peril” character of Fu Manchu, who is joined by his just as sadistic daughter Lin Tang. She’s played by Tsai Chin, who was a Bond girl twice in You Only Live Twice and Casino Royale, topped the music charts with “The Ding Dong Song” and played Auntie Lindo in The Joy Luck Club.

Rosalba Neri is also in this and you know, as bad as this movie might be, Rosalba Neri is in it. You should be so lucky as to get to spend 92 minutes with her.

This is the fifth and final time that Sir Lee played Fu Manchu, if you can believe that. Also starring in this movie is plenty of pilfered footage, including the entire opening effects coming from A Night to Remember and the dam bursting being taken from Campbell’s Kingdom.

There’s lots of fog, which I appreciate, and a plot about freezing the oceans, which I am also totally down with. Man, is Fu Manchu the good guy?

Blind Beast (1969)

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A blind sculptor and his captive muse are at the center of this Edogawa Rampo adaption, directed by Yasuzō Masumura (Giants and Toys, Irezumi). This movie looks like the inside of a maniac’s dream after they’ve done days and days of psychedelics and I couldn’t be more excited to have watched this.

Aki works as an artist’s model, but she’s never been hired like this before. She’s been kidnapped and taken to a warehouse filled with gigantic female body parts like eyes, legs, lips and breasts as well as two huge male and female figures. There, Michio tells her that he plans on using her to sculpt his most perfect version of the female body.

At first, she wants to escape, but she slowly comes to obsess over her captor as much as he does her. However, his mother, who has helped him to this point, may keep their strange romance from achieving its perfect flower.

Make no mistake — this is a dark and strange movie for grownups. But if you’ve ready for the challenge, it will reward you with an eerie story and some incredible visual scenes.

The Arrow Video blu ray of Blind Beast has new commentary by Asian cinema scholar Earl Jackson, a new introduction by Japanese cinema expert Tony Rayns and Blind Beast: Masumura the Supersensualist, a brand new visual essay by Japanese literature and visual studies scholar Seth Jacobowitz. You can order it directly from Arrow.

Mil Máscaras (1969)

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Mil Máscaras means Thousand Masks and the man behind those multiple faces became one of the most recognizable wrestlers in the entire world as well as the star of twenty movies.

The character of Mil Mascaras was announced before he even wrestled in the ring, with the character created by “El Rey Midas de la Lucha Libre” Valente Perez. Perez was the publisher of Lucha Libre magazine and also came up with Tinieblas.

Mil is one of the first lucha stars to wrestle in the U.S. — he was the first masked wrestler to appear in Madison Square Garden after the ban on masked wrestlers was lifted — and Japan, where he became a major star in All Japan Pro Wrestling, often teaming with his brother Dos Caras.

Yet Mil Máscaras was created specifically to be a movie star. This suited producer Luis Enrique Vergara well, as Santo had argued for more money and Blue Demon was injured. The lucha movies were making money, so Vergara got a new star out of Mil.

Taking a page — many pages to be fair — out of Doc Savage, Mil gets an origin story that finds him as an infant found clutched in his dead mother’s arms at the end of World War II. Scientists adopt him and put him through a brutal series of physical trials and mental lessons to create a superhuman that can make the world a better place.

While this movie was shot in black and white and may seem pretty plain when compared to the wilder lucha stories to come, everything has to start somewhere. Mil has some really fun matches in this and there’s lots of great rock and roll for the kids to twist away the night to.

While there are many that decry Mil for being selfish in the ring, he remains a major star years after being named Pro Wrestling Illustrated’s most popular wrestler in 1975. No less of an expert than the original Tiger Mask, Satoru Sayama, said ” If it weren’t for Mil Máscaras, there would be no Jushin Liger, no Último Dragón or the Great Sasuke today.”

Note: Information for this article came from Luchawiki.

Las Luchadoras vs. el Robot Asesino (1969)

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You know, Gaby (Regina Torne) is great.  Across two movies — Las Luchadoras contra El Medico Asesino and Las Luchadoras contra La Momia  — we’ve watched Gloria Venus and Golden Rubi battle evil doctors and an Aztec mummy, but now we have an evil doctor kidnapping the world’s smartest scientists and also creating a trenchcoat wearing killer who looks like he’s made out of the finest rubber than Senor Benjamin Cooper makes.

Sure, we’ve seen it before as “Return of the Cybernauts” on The Avengers, but have we see it with wrestling women and a half-ape, half-zombie, half-man named Carfax? And then, how about if we put that monsters head into a female wrestler and change her named from Berthe to Black Electra?

As was the custom at the time, there are two cuts of this movie. There was another “sexy” version with nudity that was intended for the U.S. titled El Asesino Loco y el Sexo (Sex and the Mad Killer).  The clean and filthy versions both went unreleased up here.

Director René Cardona was on a quest to make the perfect luchadora against scientists movie and damn if he didn’t succeed more than once. If you want the best realitization of his quixotic quest, I would recommend Night of the Bloody Apes, which features a heroine who dresses like a demon, a monkey/human killer that rips off faces and legitimate footage of an open heart surgery.

He also made the lucha movies La Mujer Murcielago, Neutron Traps the Invisible Killers, Las Luchadoras contra El Medico Asesino, Las Luchadoras contra La Momia, Santo vs. the Strangler, Santo vs. the Ghost of the Strangler, Las Lobas del Ring, Las Mujeres Panteras, The Treasure of Montezuma, Santo in the Treasure of Dracula, Santo vs. Capulina, Operation 67, Santo vs. the Riders of Terror, Santo in the Vengeance of the Mummy and Santo vs. the Head Hunters.

You can watch this on YouTube.

The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes (1969)

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I never went to a real college per se — I went to art school and then got my degree as quickly as I could from a university in the city, so I have no idea what it’s like to have a campus quad or fellow students into the same things that I’m into. I just live through the movie students of Medfield College, as seen in everything from The Absent-Minded Professor and Son of Flubber to this movie and its sequels Now You See Him, Now You Don’t and The Strongest Man in the World. The Shaggy D.A. also takes place in the same town.

Medfield College is named after the town of Medfield, Massachusetts, a place that Walt Disney would visit from time to time, landing his place on a private airstrip. Their middle school has a quote from Disney written in its cornerstone: “Our greatest natural resource is in the minds of our children.”

I always wondered why people disagreed so much with John Carpenter about casting Kurt Russell as Snake Plissken. I always say that your cultural experience is based off when you first experience it and didn’t realize that in myself. If I’d only known Russell from these Disney movies, I’d never see him as grizzled.

Dexter Reilly (Russell) attends the aforementioned Medfield College, a college with such a limited endowment that they can’t even afford a computer. To be fair, an HP 3000 sold for $95,000 in 1972, which is about $567,000 in today’s money.

The students get a wealthy businessman — criminal — named A.J. Arno (Cesar Romero) to donate an old computer to the college. What they get is one of his old gambling computers, which leads to all manner of problems when it quickly breaks down.

As Dexter goes to get a new part during a thunderstorm, a shock transforms him into a human computer that can do math better than anyone else, read and remember any book and speak any language within seconds. This takes Dexter from kindly friend to all to a robot, but the school is happy because they’re finally making money.

Reilly goes on a roll, leads Medfield’s team in victories against other schools on a TV quiz show. However, the word applejack unlocks all of Arno’s gambling info, so the criminal and his gang — featuring Kurt’s real-life father Bing — kidnap him. As his friends rescue him, a blow to the head turns off his computer brain, but the other team members rally to win $100,000 for the school.

Director Robert Butler may have worked in TV — and Disney films — throughout his career, but he also directed Turbulence, Up the Creek and Night of the Juggler. Writer Joseph L. McEveety also scripted The Barefoot Executive, Superdad, the two Dexter sequels, Hot Lead and Cold Feet and No Deposit, No Return.

The Oblong Box (1969)

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Based on the Edgar Allan Poe short story “The Oblong Box,” the script for this movie by Lawrence Huntington and Christopher Wicking also brings in plenty of other Poe themes like masked men, premature burial and, well, voodoo. Which has nothing to do with Poe, but hey — this is the first time Christopher Lee and Vincent Price were in a movie together, so let’s just ignore that.

While in Africa, Sir Edward Markham (Alister Williamson, who usually is in a supporting role) has his face ruined in a voodoo ceremony — shades of how The Great Kabuki (Japanese version) got his facepaint — and is kept locked up by his brother Julian (Vincent Price). The secret is that the crime that he was punished for — killing a child — was really the fault of his brother. Now, he wears the scars for the crime he did not commit.

He soon gets the family lawyer and a witchdoctor (Harry Baird, Cool It Carol) to help him fake his death, but his brother buries him — but first, a proxy as nobody wants to see what Sir Edward has become — before going off to marry his true love Elizabeth (Hilary Dwyer, which means that Matthew Hopkins finally got to have his way with Sara).

Meanwhile, Sir Edward is dug up — still alive — and given to Dr. Newhartt (Lee) to use as an experimental autopsy. The facially deformed madman blackmails the doctor and starts murdering nearly everyone he meets. By the end of this movie, numerous people have been horribly killed and both brothers are sentenced for their crimes, if not by the law, then by karma.

Sadly, this movie was to reteam Witchfinder General director Michael Reeves with Price. That film led to a renaissance of Poe films from AIP. However, Reeves fell ill while working on the film — he was also going to make an adaption of H.G. Welles’ When the Sleeper Wakes with AIP. He’d die a few months later of an accidental drug overdose. Instead, this was directed by Gordon Hessler, who also made Pray for Death and Kiss Meets the Phantom of the Park.

The pro-black scene of the slaves rising up against Sir Edward was enough to get this movie banned in Texas, which happened within several of our lifetimes. The world changes eventually, right?

 

Stiletto (1969)

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Our three-day tribute to Bernard L. Kowalski continues!

Well, even after the abject failure of the intended, sweeping epic that wasn’t Krakatoa: East of Java (reviewed this week), Bernard L. Kowalski was still in the game with this AVCO Embassy-backed adaption of a Harold Robbins (a big deal novelist in the ’60s and ’70s) novel produced by Joseph E. Levine, who brought us the successful box office epics of Zulu and A Bridge Too Far.

The then A-List Alex Cord, Britt Ekland, and Patrick O’Neal, and an up-and-coming Roy Scheider, six years away from his huge, influential shark-based horror movie, star in this then de rigueur Bond-inspired flick. We also get the familiar character actor skills of M. Emmett Walsh and Charles Durning. Why, yes, that is Raul Julia (Eyes of Laura Mars and The Addams Family franchise) in his film debut. (For me: It’ll always be Frankenstein Unbound for my Raul fix.) And if you’re a fan of Danger: Diabolik (1968), and aren’t we all, Britt Ekland was a last minute replacement for that film’s Marisa Mell as Cord’s co-star. But that’s okay, since we got Marisa in Seven Blood-Stained Orchids.

Count Cesare Cardinali (Cord, of Genesis II fame) has the perfect cover for his secret life as a profession mob hitman-for-hire: he’s a famed jet-setting playboy. Of course, as with all of those hitmen before and after him, he decides it’s time to retire and enjoy the spoils — but when you know too much, you’ll have to be “eliminated” as well.

Courtesy of the Bondness-meets-The Godfatherness of it all, there’s lots of (stylized) scenes in casinos and on yachts with Cord and Elkand in Speedos and string bikinis in exotic places like Puerto Rico. Then the tux and dripping-with-jewels gowns are taken off the hangers for the usual New York penthouse sets. And while there’s an Italian connection in here, Puerto Rico doubles for Sicily — when it’s not being “Puerto Rico.”

Stiletto certainly isn’t awful, but the cops-chasing-robbers set-up is all very TV movie flat, which is why this received an early appearance on CBS-TV. And don’t forget: this all comes from the while successful, but cheesy, melodramatic pen of Harold Robbins. If you’ve never read one of his books or seen a movie based on his books (The Betsy, The Lonely Lady), then maybe you know Robbins as result of his being named-dropped by the English new-wave band Squeeze in the lyrics — “a Harold Robbins paperback” — in their song “Pulling Mussels (From The Shell).” Or, since we are all Roger Corman fans around here, you know Harold Robbins by way of Corman’s 1970 post-apocalyptic Gas! – Or- It Became Necessary to Destroy the World in Order to Save It, as a young couple uses a public library’s copies of the successful but critically-derided collected works of Jacqueline Susann (her books became the movies Valley of the Dolls, The Love Machine, and Once Is Not Enough) and Harold Robbins as kindling to keep warm.

Sadly, there’s no online streams to share, but DVDs are easily available, the best versions are from Kino Lorber, who also issued Stiletto on Blu-ray.

About the Author: You can learn more about the writings of R.D Francis on Facebook. He also writes for B&S About Movies.

BRUNO MATTEI WEEK: 99 Women (1969)

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This movie is quite literally the Justice League — more like the Legion of Doom — of scumbag film superstars.

It was written and produced by Harry Alan Towers, who went from syndicating radio and TV shows to being arrested along with his girlfriend Mariella Novotny — who was played by Britt Eklund in Scandal — for operating a vice ring. He jumped bail and ran to Europe while his lover revealed that Towers was a Soviet agent using his girls to get info for the Russians. And Novotny, a high-class call girl, had already been linked to both John and Robert Kennedy, as well as having experience working for MI5.

Once he settled down in Europe, Towers married actress Maria Rohm — she’s in this, as well as several other Jess Franco movies — and started writing and producing movies based on the novels of Agatha Christie, the Marquis de Sade and giallo father — one of many, but a father nonetheless — Edgar Wallace.

Plus, he worked extensively with the second member of our rogue’s gallery: Jesus “Jess” Franco.  This may have been the first film that Jess and Towers worked on, but they would make The Girl from Rio, Venus in Furs, Justine, Eugenie… The Story of Her Journey into Perversion, The Bloody Judge, Count Dracula, The Blood of Fu Manchu and The Castle of Fu Manchu.

Franco made at least 173 movies and took a gradual slide from horror, Eurospy and softcore films into grimier and grimier films. He’s an acquired taste that I’ve grown to enjoy, yet for every well-made movie like Bloody Moon, you’ll find one where you wonder if Franco had even seen a film before, much less made one.

The reason for that is often the funds that Franco had at his disposal. He’s the kind of filmmaker who would make ten bad movies instead of one good one, providing that he was getting the chance to make a movie.

He reminds me a lot of the third member of our exploitation army of evil and that would be the man that edited this movie — and from all accounts directed the pornographic insert (pun intended) scenes — Bruno Mattei..

The French version of this movie features eight minutes of fully adult footage, shot with body doubles in similar settings, all to give the illusion that this movie is way more hardcore than it really is.

To be perfectly frank, this movie is an aberrant work of absolute indecency even without seeing gynecological footage of the old in and out.

New inmate Marie (Rohm, yes, the producer’s wife, yet she endures so much that you really get the idea that this is not an example of nepotism) has arrived at Castillo de la Muerte, an island prison where she’s given the number — she no longer has a name — 99.

She’s joined by Helga, now known as 97. She’s played by Elisa Montes, who had appeared in several peplum and westerns before this. And Natalie Mendoz — 98 — is played by Luciana Paluzzi, who was SPECTRE assassin Fiona Volpa in Thunderball, as well as showing up in everything from The Green Slime to A Black Veil for Lisa, The Man Who Came from Hate and The Klansman.

They’re suffering under the oppressive sapphic rule of Thelma Diaz, a tough warden who is, shockingly, played by Oscar-winner Mercedes McCambridge, who won that award for All the King’s Men, was nominated for Giant and was also the voice of Pazuzu. She’s berserk in this movie, laying it all on the line, unafraid to go over the top and then keep her upward trajectory.

“From now on you have no name, only a number. You have no future, only the past. No hope, only regrets. You have no friends, only me,” she barks at them before they even get into the prison.

Eventutally, Diaz takes things too far, but even the new warden Caroll (Maria Schell, who had an affair so memorable with Glenn Ford that she remembered it two decades later and gifted him with a dog named Bismarck who became his constant companion) can’t improve this hell on earth. So the women escape at the same time that several men break out from the similarly brutal rule of Governor Santos (Herbert Lom).

What happens when you have several damaged women on the run being followed by men who haven’t even seen a woman in decades? And what if that happens in a Jess Franco movie? Yeah, you can see where this is heading.

Rosalba Neri — Lady Frankenstein! — is also on hand to pretty much set the film on fire in every single frame that she shows up in.

Every Women In Prison movie that would follow in the slimy wake of this film would be based upon the path that it blazed, including Mattei’s own The Jail: Women’s Hell, which he waited nearly four decades to make and pretty much stuck pretty close to what Franco started. Well, he was also following the even more berserk template he’d established with Violence In a Women’s Prison and Women’s Prison Massacre. Man, if you want a WIP movie, call Bruno Mattei. Sadly, you can’t. He’s dead.

Or you could call Jess Franco, were he alive. He made nine WIP movies in his career, including Women In Cellblock 9, Tropical Inferno, Justine, The Lovers of Devil’s Island, Barbed Wire Dolls, Women Behind Bars, Love Camp, Sadomania and this movie.

This is one of the Franco films where he’s making not just a movie, but a good movie. The focus is soft, the feel is surreal and the interplay with the Bruno Nicolai score is fabulous. I could have done without the scumdog feel of the French cut, but hey, I’m doing an entire week of Bruno Mattei movies.

Trust me, Jess Franco will get his turn.

Lee Majors Week: The Ballad of Andy Crocker (1969)

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After his 112-episode, 4-year run as Heath Barkley on ABC-TV’s The Big Valley, it was time to see if Lee Majors could carry a feature film. And he did, with this, the screenwriting debut by familiar ’60s and ’70s TV actor Stuart Margolin (we know him best from his support role as Angel Martin, James Garner’s former cell mate, in The Rockford Files). And who’s the director on this? Well, hey, it’s George McCowan — the guy who brought us the nature-run-amuck classic, Frogs and the Canadian Star Wars dropping that is The Shape of Things to Come, as well as a few episodes of the pre-Star Wars venture The Starlost, and too many ’60s and ’70s U.S. TV series to mention.

One of the earliest films — long before the 1979 Oscar Winner, Coming Home — that dealt with the emotional trauma of returning Vietnam veterans, Lee stars as Andy Crocker. He’s a disaffected vet who returns to his Texas hometown to discover his girlfriend was forced into marrying another man, his once successful motorcycle shop is left in ruins, and those he once through were his friends, now turn their backs on him. The campaign against him is led by the town’s queen bee: the mother of his ex-girlfriend.

In addition to this serving as Majors’s film debut, be on the lookout for R&B musician Marvin Gaye (he finished his acting career with Chrome and Hot Leather starring William Smith), country musician and breakfast sausage king Jimmy Dean (who followed up with a role in Diamonds Are Forever), and Righteous Brother Bobby Hatfield, each in their acting debuts. Keen TV eyes and lovers off things character-actor will notice Joe Higgins (from TV’s The Big Valley and The Rifleman, but also Record City and Sixpack Annie!), ’60s six kitten Joey Heatherton (Cry-Baby), longtime Clint Eastwood sidekick and future Commission Gordon Pat Hingle (Rachel, Sweet Rachel), and Agnes Moorehead (TV’s Bewitched, but also of What’s the Matter with Helen? and The Bat!) rounding out the cast.

You can watch The Ballad of Andy Crocker — Stuart Margolin’s screenwriting debut — on You Tube, and watch his latest screenplay, What the Night Can Do, for free on IMDbTV (via your IMDb, Amazon, or Google accounts). We found the original, 1969 trailer to enjoy, as well.

About the Author: You can learn more about the writings of R.D Francis on Facebook. He also writes for B&S About Movies.