Tag Archives: 1970

CBS LATE MOVIE: Moon Zero Two (1970)

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EDITOR’S NOTE: Moon Zero Two was on the CBS Late Movie on January 26, 1973 and June 7, 1974.

Hammer does science fiction! Directed by Roy Ward Baker and written by Michael Carreras, this promised that there would be moon colonies by 2021. Millionaire J.J. Hubbard (Warren Mitchel) wants space explorer Bill Kemp (James Olson) to capture an asteroid in low orbit that can be transformed into better rocket fuel, allowing people like Kemp to not just colonize or be a tourist to the moon but to go to other worlds. After all, kemp was the first man on Mars.

Kemp lucks out by offering to help Clementine Taplin (Catherine Schell), whose brother owned a nickel mine — and was killed by Hubbard — putting her in the position of being rich once the asteroid lands there.

One of the film’s other writers, Gavin Lyall, wanted this to be much tougher than as glossy as it got. His wife, Katharine Whitehorn, said, “It was about — or supposed to be about — space travel when it had got to the beat-up-old-Dakota stage of grubby reality. The people who made it were dazzled by Kubrick’s 2001 and couldn’t resist trying to make it glossy and improbably perfect, the exact opposite of what the authors intended: all the gritty realism was gone.”

It came out three months after man went to the moon — maybe — which caused Ward to say, “Moon Zero Two was a bad picture. It was hopeless, and never got off the ground. We didn’t have enough money to do it properly. It was crazy – a complete muddle. And, it was undercut by the fact that you could turn on the television and see Neil Armstrong jumping about on the real Moon.”

Maybe he wasn’t totally right, as the sets were so realistic they were reused for years on TV shows like Space:1999, Moonbase 3 and UFO, as well as the movies Superman II, Superman IV and 2009’s Moon.

In the U.S., this was sold as the first space western. It played double features with When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth.

Sizzlin’ Summer of Side-Splitters 2025: Cauliflower Cupids (1970)

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July 14-20  Vanity Project Week: “…it might be said that the specific remedy for vanity is laughter, and that the one failing that is essentially laughter is vanity.” Are these products of passionate and industrious independent filmmakers OR outrageous glimpses into the inner workings of self-obsessed maniacs??

Also known as The Godfather and the Lady and Six Champions Go Wild, this starts with a girl — I should say dame, in the parlance of this movie — named Caress Softly (Sharynne Dale, The Runaways) learns that some hitmen want to rub out Johnny Stiletto. She quickly warns Stiletto’s gang, who box the hitmen with wacky sound design.

Oh yeah. So I should tell you who is in this.

Johnny is Peter Savage. A self-taught writer, actor and filmmaker, Savage wrote the book that Raging Bull is based on. He’d been friends with Jake La Motta since they were kids and the two boxed together. He directed, wrote, produced and stars in this. Johnny is the godfather to the Cauliflower Cupids gang, who are made up of six world boxing champions: Gentle Jim (Jake LaMotta), The Rocker (Rocky Graziano), Willie the Eye (Willie Pep), Bennie the Bug (Paddy DeMarco), Tony the Bomber (Tony Zale) and Dinty the Dope (Petey Scalzo).

Johnny wants to retire so that his daughter Paulette (Carol Walker) can have a better life than he did, especially because she’s pregnant with rich young man Armand’s (Joe Bennet) child. He demands that they get married, but his guardian, Aunt Nira (Jane Russell), is standing in the way of their enforced bliss.

She’s getting all of her money from Uncle Bruno (Bud Truland), who hates the rest of the family, who all use him for money. So Johnny gets made up like Bruno, they change the will, fake the old man’s death and Johnny and his boys — who keep refusing to allow him to retire — can go out in style.

That is, if John Bradley (Alan Dale) doesn’t arrest them first.

This ends with Johnny serving as Nira’s love slave, a role he expected from her, and is even forced to kiss her feet. That’s a pretty BDSM close for an early 70s mob movie.

Jane Russell is 45 in this (it was shot in 1966 and didn’t come out until 1970) and looks better than women twenty years younger. She’s way better than this movie deserves, and yet I love that she’s in it.

As for Savage, he comes off a lot like Duke Mitchell, which is a compliment. He’d already made The Runaways, but would go on to direct and write Hypnorotica (Jamie Gillis is in it!), the American version of The New Life Style (Just to Be Loved), Sylvia (an X-rated version of Sybil that has Sonny Landham in its cast) and They Shall Overcome. He’s in all of those films and also shows up as a john in Taxi Driver, as DeMarco in Crazy Joe, as a boss in Double Agent 73, as an assistant in New York, New York, as a lawyer in Firepower, as Jackie Curtie in Raging Bull and as Thomas “Mr. T” Stokely in Vigilante, a movie that William Lustig dedicated to him.

As for the boxers in this, several of them show up in other films:

Jake LeMotta was also in Firepower, Hangmen, Maniac Cop, The Runaways, Who Killed Mary Whats’ername?, The Hustler, Rebellion In Cuba, La Violenza dei Dannati, The Doctor and the Playgirl and, of course, Confessions of a Psycho Cat.

Rocky Graziano appeared in several films, including Tony Rome, The Doctor and the Playgirl, Teenage Millionaire, and Country Music Holiday, where he played himself alongside June Carter, Zsa Zsa Gabor, Ferlin Husky, and numerous country musicians.

Willie Pep was only in one other film, Requiem for a Heavyweight, just like Tony Gale, who was also in The Golden Gloves Story. This is the only movie that Paddy DeMarco and Petey Scalzo were in.

I’ve been looking for this movie for years and am so excited that I finally found it. It’s by no means excellent or even good, but to me, it’s everything that I wanted it to be.

You can watch this on YouTube.

CBS LATE MOVIE: They Call Me Trinity (1970)

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EDITOR’S NOTE: They Call Me Trinity was on the CBS Late Movie on December 23, 1976..

The Spaghetti Western Database is my guide when I watch these movies and they say this about They Call Me Trinity: “…often described as the film that destroyed the spaghetti western and saved the Italian movie industry. In Italy, the movie even linguistically marks the end of an era. Whereas the diehard Westerns were called spaghetti Westerns, the Trinity movies and the numerous imitations they spawned would be called fagioli Westerns. Fagioli (= beans) refers to the obsession with food, notably beans, both Trinity movies express.”

Terence Hill, who plays Trinity, is nothing like the dark heroes in the rest of the Italian West. Sure, there’s some violence in this movie, but by the end, it’s become an actual comedy, and you care more about the characters than what they’ll do or who they’ll kill.

Director Enzo Barboni wrote the original story and screenplay for the film. Which was supposedly much darker than what ended up being in this movie. Producer Italo Zingarelli suggested the inclusion of a brother, which is how Bambino (Bud Spencer) comes in.

The original idea was for Peter Martell and George Eastman to be the brothers, but Hill and Spencer were popular after God Forgives… I Don’t!,  Ace High and Boot Hill (which was rereleased as Trinity Rides in some areas). This wasn’t just big in Italy; it was huge in France and Germany.

Again, unlike every Italian cowboy before him, Trinity doesn’t come into town dragging a coffin or tall in the saddle. He’s sleeping, lounging as his horse drags him somewhere new. His first meeting in the movie is with bounty hunters who have an injured Mexican with them. Trinity takes their prisoner and kills the others when they try to shoot him in the back. He’s nearly superhuman in his ability to draw and shoot, which is the opposite of his laconic demeanor.

Similarly, Bambino is the sheriff, someone who can shoot just like Trinity, but he is a burly man twice his size and someone who is ill-tempered, whereas Trinity is full of smiles and kind words. All they have in common is that when they need to kill someone, it’s second nature to them. It’s what they do best.

Bambino became the law when he accidentally killed the man riding to town to take that role. No, his scam is taking that job until his gang arrives. He has to deal with a lot, like Major Harriman (Farley Granger), who is trying to run the Mormons off their land so that he can use it for his prize horses. Unbranded horses, so that means someone — someone like Trinity and Bambino — can make a lot of money stealing them.

Despite being called the Right and Left Hands of the Devil, the two keep doing the right thing, Maybe it’s because he’s fallen for two angelic Mormon girls and is thinking about marrying them both. Or perhaps Trinity just sees protecting these peaceful Mormons as the right thing to do, even convincing his brother and his henchmen to show them how to fight.

Of course, they’re successful. Trinity also learns that being a Mormon means working hard, so he lies back down and lets his horse take him somewhere, maybe further west, perhaps somewhere that he can annoy his half-brother some more.

“You may think he’s a sleepy-type guy; he always takes his time. Soon, I know you’ll be changing your mind when you’ve seen him use a gun.”

I know that I should be protective of the rougher movies of the genre, but I have to confess that I loved every moment of this movie. It’s pure joy on film, from the arguments between Trinity and Bambino to the fact that Trinity looks at beans like most Western heroes look at money.

If you ever wonder what I want for Christmas, it’s this Trinity action figure.

You can watch this on Tubi.

CBS LATE MOVIE: The Priest’s Wife (1970)

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EDITOR’S NOTE: The Priest’s Wife was on the CBS Late Movie on February 21 and November 14, 1972 and October 22, 1973.

Directed by the master of commedia all’italiana, Dino Risi (Operazione San Gennaro, Fantasma d’amore), who wrote the script with Ruggero Maccari and Bernardino Zapponi, this film pairs Sophia Loren and Marcello Mastroianni as Valeria Billi and Don Marco. She learns that her boyfriend was already married and shocked by that reveal, tries to kill herself, but not before running that man off the road, beating him and smashing his car. Ending up in the hospital after calling a Help Line and speaking to Don Marco, he visits her as she recovers. She falls in love with him, but he’s already married to the Roman Catholic church, as he’s a priest.

Sure, Loren and Mastroianni are one of the screen’s most famous couples. Still, even though producer Carlo Ponti did his best to make this work for international audiences with better dubbing than usual, it’s a rough movie to get through. Maybe I am cursed, because when I see Rome, I’m always looking for a masked killer with black gloves. I also didn’t like that Loren is either a strong woman or someone ready to die because a guy leaves her from scene to scene. I preferred the version of her slapping her unfaithful boyfriend into oblivion.

You can watch this on YouTube.

 

Sizzlin’ Summer of Side-Splitters 2025: Multiple Maniacs (1970)

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June 30- July 6 Puke Week!: Throwing up isn’t very funny, but making your internet friends watch a puke movie is!

The Cavalcade of Perversion is run by Lady Divine (Divine) and Mr. David (David Lochary) and it has everything you’d want to see when it comes to getting grossed out, like a Puke Eater. At the end of every show, Divien robs people, but now she’s moved on to wanting to murder them.

“Yes folks, this isn’t any cheap X-rated movie or any 5th rate porno play, this is the show you want! Lady Divine’s cavalcade of perversions, the sleaziest show on earth! Not actors, not paid impostors, but real, actual filth who have been carefully screened in order to present to you the most flagrant violation of natural law known to man! These assorted sluts, fags, dykes and pimps know no bounds! They have committed acts against God and nature, acts that by their mere existence would make any decent person recoil in disgust.”

One night, when she gets home to her daughter Cookie (Cookie Mueller) and her Weatherman Underground boyfriend Steve (Paul Swift), she learns — from Edith Massey! — that Mr. David is cheating on her with Bonnie (Mary Vivian Pearce). Divine races out to confront them, but gets assaulted by glue sniffers. Then, Bonnie joins the show.

Then, the Infant of Prague (Michael Renner Jr.) leads Divine to a church, where she has a religious experience, during which Mink Stole describes the Stations of the Cross while inserting a rosary into her. This leads to a war between Mr. David and Bonnie versus Divine and Mink, which ends with Divine being overcome by bloodlust and killing everyone in her way. She’s assaulted again, this time by a giant lobster, and like a kaiju herself, Divine battles all of Baltimore before being shot in the streets by the National Guard.

Hope you aren’t offended easily!

Inspired by Two Thousand Maniacs!, this ends with Divine seizing. her power, shouting “I’m a maniac! A maniac that cannot be cured! O Divine, I am Divine!”

Throughout the movie, Divine taunts Mr. David with the idea that he is responsible for the Manson murders. At one stage of filming, this was to end with Divine being responsible.

WEIRD WEDNESDAY: The Body Beneath (1970)

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Making his way to England instead of Staten Island, Andy Milligan created a vampire movie in which Rev. Alexander Algernon Ford (Gavin Reed) has an entire family of vampires — a wife who doesn’t speak, three green-skinned vampire women and a hunchback named Spool — living in Carfax Abbey.

Inbreeding is destroying this vampiric brood, so he calls out to America for more family members to add to the DNA and increase their chances of survival.

To get this on film, Milligan handmade costumes and smeared vaseline all over the lens. As always, he also had everyone scream at the top of their lungs.

Spool is abused throughout the movie, even when he’s trying to do the right thing and save the victims.

Many people seem to dislike this movie, and, to be honest, maybe I have Stockholm Syndrome because I watched so many Andy Milligan movies in the same week, but I’m not seeing the same film that they have. I kind of fall into a drone dream when I watch these, letting them wash over me and take away the world that I don’t want to be in. I feel sad for others who can’t use these movies in the same way.

You can watch this on Tubi.

WEIRD WEDNESDAY: Bloodthirsty Butchers (1970)

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Released as a double feature with Torture Dungeon, Bloodthirsty Butchers finds Andy Milligan making another one of the classics. Sweeney Todd, to be exact.

Sweeney Todd (John Miranda) and Maggie Lovett (Jane Hilary) come together to kill off their customers, steal their money and valuables, and give the bodies to Tobias Ragg (Berwick Kaler) for disposal. After a few kills, they start getting way into murder, so they decide to start using the bodies to make meat pies, including one that has a woman’s entire breast in it.

Shot in London, this actually feels like it could be in its period, unlike the New York City Milligan movies, where you can see modern buildings and hear the traffic. Milligan made five movies in 1970 alone — Torture Dungeon, Nightbirds, Guru the Mad Monk and The Body Beneath are the other films — and it’s pretty wild that he was doing so much so often. Then again, to the casual viewer, these movies are overly melodramatic films made by a lunatic who can’t even use a tripod, but to those who love these movies, well, they’re also excessively melodramatic films made by a lunatic who can’t even use a tripod. Perspective is important.

TV Guide said that Bloodthirsty Butchers was a “gory and typically cheap retelling of the Sweeney Todd legend.” One star.

I may have ranked it much higher.

You can watch this on Tubi.

WEIRD WEDNESDAY: Black Angels (1970)

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Satan’s Serpents and The Choppers are happy to coexist, but the cops start pushing racial tensions between them in the hopes that the two biker gangs will wipe one another off the face of the planet. Any wars these gangs had before this were about turf, not the color of their skin. But Lt. Harper (Clancy Syrko) hates bikers, and there you go.

What sets this beyond other biker films is that there’s a pet racoon who smokes weed, a mountain lion, snakes used to kill people, bikers pissing all over one another, screaming stuff like “It’s champagne! I just blessed you with my golden shower!” and people have names like Chainer (he has a chain) and Knifer (because he has a knife). They’re named like off-brand GI Joe lines, like America’s Defense and The Corps, used to name the bad guys. There’s also a go-go dancer who doesn’t let a full-on brawl stop the dance.

Mostly, people ride bikes. If you like to see people ride bikes, that’s good news. People ride lots of bikes.

This was directed and written by Laurence Merrick, who also made Guess What Happened to Count Dracula? and Manson. He was killed by a stalker in 1977.

Also known as Black Bikers from Hell.

WEIRD WEDNESDAY: The Bird with the Crystal Plumage (1970)

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Aside from Mario Bava’s influential films, such as Blood and Black Lace, The Girl Who Knew Too Much, no other movie has left as indelible a mark on the Giallo genre as Dario Argento’s 1970 directorial debut. Before this, Argento was a journalist who contributed to the screenplay of Sergio Leone’s Once Upon a Time in the West.

The title of the film, The Bird with the Crystal Plumage, is a metaphor for the protagonist’s predicament. Just as the bird is trapped by the beauty of the crystal plumage, Sam is trapped by the beauty of the art gallery and the mystery it holds. This metaphorical title sets the tone for the film and its exploration of the relationship between art and violence. In the film, Sam Dalmas (played by Tony Musante) is an American writer struggling with writer’s block. He travels to Rome for a change of scenery, accompanied by his British model girlfriend, played by Suzy Kendall. Just as he decides to return home, he witnesses a black-gloved man attacking a woman inside an art gallery. Desperate to save her, he finds himself helpless, trapped between two mechanical doors as the woman silently pleads for help.

The woman, Monica Ranier, is the gallery owner’s wife. Although she survives the attack, the police suspect Sam may be involved in the crime and confiscate his passport to prevent him from leaving the country. Unbeknownst to them, a serial killer has been targeting young women for weeks, and Sam is the only witness. Haunted by the attack, Sam’s memory is unreliable, leaving him without a crucial clue that could solve the case, adding a layer of suspense to the narrative.

This film introduces several tropes that would become hallmarks of the genre: the foreign stranger turned detective, the gaps in memory, and the black-clad killer—elements that later Giallo films would pay homage to. These elements, along with Argento’s unique visual style and use of suspense, would go on to influence a generation of filmmakers and shape the Giallo genre as we know it today.

Another recurring theme in Argento’s work appears for the first time here: the notion that art can incite violence. In this instance, a painting depicting a raincoat-clad man murdering a woman plays a significant role.

As the story unfolds, Sam receives menacing phone calls from the killer, and the masked assailant attacks Julia. The police manage to isolate a sound in the background of the killer’s conversations—the call of a rare Siberian bird. This bird, a Grey Crowned Crane, plays a significant role in the film’s narrative, serving as a clue that brings the police closer to unraveling the mystery. The film’s use of this rare bird as a plot device is a testament to Argento’s skill as a storyteller and his ability to create tension and suspense.

Alberto, Monica’s husband and the owner of the art gallery, ultimately attempts to kill her, revealing that he orchestrated the attacks. However, in true giallo fashion, mistaken identity is a crucial plot twist. Even though this film was made nearly fifty years ago, I won’t spoil the reveal of the real killer.

I recall my parents seeing this movie before I was born and disliking it so much that they would mention “that weird movie with the bird that makes the noises” whenever they encountered a confusing film. Ironically, I grew to love Argento’s work. My fascination with Giallo and difficult-to-understand films is a form of rebellion against their opinions.

This film, an uncredited adaptation of Fredric Brown’s novel *The Screaming Mimi*, was initially considered a career misstep by actress Eva Renzi. The film’s producer even wanted to replace Argento as director. However, when Argento’s father, Salvatore, spoke with the producer, he noticed that the executive’s secretary appeared shaken. When he asked her what was wrong, she revealed she was still terrified from watching the film. Salvatore convinced her to explain her fear to her boss, ultimately leading to Argento staying as director.

The outcome of this struggle? It is a film that played in one theater in Milan for three and a half years, leading to countless imitators—and inspired many elements in films featuring lizards, spiders, flies, ducklings, butterflies, and more—for decades to come. Argento would later continue his so-called Animal Trilogy with The Cat O’Nine Tails and Four Flies on Grey Velvet, then Deep Red before moving into more supernatural films like Suspiria and Inferno.

WEIRD WEDNESDAY: Bigfoot (1970)

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Anthony Cardoza produced some really interesting films. You may call them turkeys. You may also call them…well, you wouldn’t call them works of art. But hey, his movies live on, like The Beast of Yucca Flats, The Hellcats and today’s film, Bigfoot.

Jasper B. Hawks (John Carradine!) and Elmer Briggs (John Mitchum, brother of Robert and the writer of the John Wayne voiced “America, Why I Love Her” that TV stations used to sign off when TV stations still existed and actually signed off) are driving around the forest. And Joi Landis (Joi Lansing, a former MGM contract girl who shows up in the long tracking shot that begins Touch of Evil, in her final role) is a pilot whose plane breaks down. She parachutes into the woods and encounters Bigfoot.

Then there’s Rick (Chris Mitchum, son of Robert and also an actor in films like Jodorowsky’s Tusk and Jess Franco’s Faceless) and his girlfriend Chris, who find a Bigfoot cemetery and get attacked, too.

Of course, the authorities are of no help. Only Jasper will help Rick, and that’s because he wants a Bigfoot for his freak show.

Peggy gets kidnapped by Bigfoot, and we discover that Joi has been taken, too. Upon reaching the lair of the Bigfoots (Bigfeet?), we discover that the creatures we’ve seen are his wives, and the real creature is 200 feet tall. Yes,. You just read that right. And he’s about to fight a bear that’s just as huge.

A gang of bikers gasses Bigfoot, but he escapes the freakshow and then gets blown up by bikers. John Carradine quotes from King Kong (he does throughout the film) and the movie ends.

Along the way, we find Doodles Weaver, whose scene in the completely bonkers The Zodiac Killer may be the most ridiculous scene in what is quite honestly one of the strangest films I’ve ever seen.

And hey, is that Bing Crosby’s son Lindsey? Yes, it is! And the first singing cowboy, Ken Maynard! This movie has actors with much more interesting stories than the film they’re stuck in.

But you know what is interesting? The strange doom funk that plays every time the bikers show up. And keep your eyes open for a quick appearance by Haji, who famously appeared in Russ Meyer’s Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! 

Director Robert F. Slatzer only did two other movies, but one of them was The Hellcats, where Russ Hagen battles a female gang. Leather on the outside…all woman on the inside!

But hey — Bigfoot. Come for the bikers. Stay for the bigfoots. Enjoy the bikinis. But dig this crazy sound, man!