The fourth film in this series has a similar set-up to Delinquent Girl Boss: Blossoming Girl Dreams, with Reiko Oshida’s Rika getting out of reform school and working for the mechanic father of one of her classmates, who is of course being muscled in on by the Yakuza. Have they learned nothing from the other movies?
The end of this film, where the five female leads wear red overcoats and literally walk in high fashion to the mob boss’ lair with the soundtrack blaring was taken and used by Assassination Nation, but trust me, this movie is a billion times cooler than that film can ever dream of being.
Obviously, reform school has only made Rika tougher, but also more concerned about her friends, her community and others, while the Yakuza only wants to take everything they can. That’s why she’s a hero, even if the world only sees her as a girl that needs tamed.
These films in no way get close to the excesses of this genre, but are certainly worthy of your time.
EDITOR’S NOTE: I love this movie and that was apparent when it was originally on the site on November 19, 2018. As Curtis Harrington week continues, let’s go back and watch it all over again.
I like to play this game where any time the title of the movie is mentioned, I scream and cheer like I’m Pee Wee sitting on Chairy. Good news for me — What’s the Matter with Helen? says it’s title more than once, leading to me wondering if I should invest in the paper bags full of confetti that Rip Taylor always seems to have to throw around.
Two young men are going to jail for life after murdering an older woman. Then, we see their mothers — played by Shelley Winters and Debbie Reynolds — as they bravely face an angry mob and drive away. As they make their way home, an anonymous phone call takes credit for the attack which bloodied up Winters’ character Helen. Reynolds character Adelle then reveals her plan to pack up her cardboard standup of herself and move to California to start a dance studio. Soon, the two ladies have changed their last names and gone west.
This is a movie packed with odd situations and even odder characters, like elocution teacher Hamilton Starr and a tramp who continually bothers Adelle. And oh yeah — Helen is madly in love with her friend and becomes insanely jealous to the point that she often sticks her fingers into metal fans when she isn’t listening to Sister Alma (Agnes Moorehead) on the radio. Alma is obviously Aimee Semple McPherson, the 1920’s and 30’s celebrity whose Foursquare Church’s faith healing radio broadcasts were the forerunner of modern televangelism and charismatic Christianity.
Adelle falls for Lincoln Palmer (Dennis Weaver), the father of one of her students. He’s rich as it gets, rich enough to pay for gigolos to dance with her while he watches in yet another one of those moments that would get explored in a modern movie and are just another creepy aside in this one.
Between Helen murdering people who break into their house, then trying to be forgiven by Sister Alma all while having flashbacks to her husband being run over by a plow, her madness soon overtakes the film and things proceed to a rather sudden and shocking conclusion. There’s also an extended miniature golf sequence and numerous rabbit murders, as well as the reveal that Helen may have been right to kill at least one of the intruders.
This movie happened when director Curtis Harrington (Night Tide, Whoever Slew Auntie Roo?) and producer George Edwards approached writer Henry Farrell (What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?) hoping to get a screenplay. Hagsploitation was in, baby, and these dudes wanted in on the action!
According to Debbie Reynolds, Shelley Winters’s psychiatrist had warned her not to take this movie, as she was about to play a woman having a nervous breakdown while she was actually having one. She claims that Winters became her character to the point that the studio considered replacing her with Geraldine Page, who had plenty of hagsploitation cred after starring in Robert Aldrich’s What Ever Happened to Aunt Alice?
Winters also totally caught the lesbian undercurrents — well, they’re not so well hidden, so let’s say overcurrents — in the movie, but the scenes where she really played it up were left on the cutting room floor.
It’s worth noting that this was an Oscar-nominated film — for Reynolds outfits, that is. If you have a Debbie Reynolds crush, good news. This is the movie for you. This is also the movie for you if you love musical numbers about animal crackers.
Every single person in this one is disreputable, even the children, who are forced to dress as showgirls and purr songs like “Oh, You Nasty Man.” This posits What’s the Matter with Helen? as a forerunner of calling out the blatant sexuality of child beauty pageants years before Jon Benet was murdered.
I’ve always wanted to see this movie, despite its trailer and poster giving away the ending. What were they thinking? That said, there’s enough weirdness here to sustain my interest, even if I knew how it was all going to turn out.
Want to see it? Shout! Factory has recently released it on blu ray.
The January 26, 1971 ABC Movie of the Week, this film was directed by Jerry Paris, who you may know as Jerry Helper, the dentist and next-door neighbor of Rob and Laura Petrie. What you may not know is that he directed 237 of the 255 episodes of Happy Days in addition to Police Academy 2: Their First Assignmentand Police Academy 3: Back in Training.
Speaking of police, hey, there’s the fuzz right there in the title. Said cop is played by David Hartman, who would go on to host Good Morning America from 1975 to 1987. He’s Officer Jerry Frazer and somehow, he ends up splitting an apartment with pediatrician Jane Bowers (Barbara Eden). They’re quite the odd couple — that had to be the pitch for this — as he’s a traditional man’s man who dates a Playboy Bunny (Farrah Fawcett!) and she’s a believer in women’s lib who has a mother’s boy for a fiancee (Herb Edelman, who would one day be Blance’s ex Stanley on The Golden Girls).
This is just packed with TV stars, like M*A*S*H* and Dragnet‘s Harry Morgan as Jane’s father, Jo Anne Worley as the feminist leader of Women Against Men Dr. Debby Inglefinger and Julie Newmar as an aspiring porn star who asks Jerry to arrest her so she can have a place to sleep.
It’s 74 minutes of fluff, you know exactly where it’s going but man, there’s nothing like early 70s TV to just make our 2021 world feel a little better.
Lucky Moore is really Carlo Croccolo, who acted in around 137 movies and made two of his own, this one and Gunman of One Hundred Crosses, and they’re both on the low end of the Italian Western but that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t watch them, learn something and perhaps be entertained.
The main reason for me watching this is that the camera operator was a young — well, thirty-five — Aristide Massaccesi using his real name. The footage that he shot for this movie would find its way into a movie that he directed early in his career, Bounty Hunter In Trinity.
The O’Hara brothers run a small town in the west and despite the bounty on their heads, they’re working with Judge Wilson to make farmers sign his name to their land deeds and then kill they kill them and split the will. It seems like a great scam, but then Burt Collins comes to town and after a rigged game of cards, he kills two of the O’Hara’s men. On his way to escape from the town, he runs into the mysterious lawyer James Webb (yes, Klaus Kinski is on the side of the angels and I feel very strange about it). After killing three more gang members, Burt gets the job of sheriff instead of going to trial.
Meanwhile, the O’Haras are told that Burt is visiting his brother Peter, who lives in the wilderness with his Native American wife Sarah (Marina Malfatti, All the Colors of the Dark, The Night Evelyn Came Out of the Grave). They kill him, set the house on fire and — yes, an Italian movie — assault his wife but she lives. That’s their big mistake, because she’s probably the deadliest person in this movie, using a knife and firing explosive arrows (that become a major part of Bounty Hunter In Trinity) to kill just about everyone that’s done her wrong.
Look — Klaus Kinski is a lawyer who hides hundreds of his guns inside hollowed out law books and one assumes he goes from town to town in the west and finds situations where people of low morals need to be dealt with harshly while having no real morals himself. If we forget most of the rest of the movie — I’m also all for Malfatti killing those that so grossly wronged her and yes, that assault scene is really rough — and just think about a movie where Klaus tries cases, then opens a book, stares at someone and shoots them, your watch of this film is worth it.
A Harlequin for my heart:Image courtesy of Sherry E. DeBoer via her IMDb page from a “Teen” magazine photo shoot.
Well, you know how the VCRs roll at B&S About Movies . . . where a review of Peter Carpenter’s Point of Terror, as well as Blood Mania, leads to a reader inquiry and discussion on whatever happened ever happened to Pete . . . which inspires a two-fer review of Vixen! and Love Me Like I Do to finish off his all-too-slight resume. And those discussion about Pete left us wondering . . . “What ever happened to Gene Shane from Werewolves on Wheels and The Velvet Vampire?”
Well, as you know, we solved “The Case of Peter Carpenter” with that said, two-fer review, and we peeled away at the onion that is “The Mystery of Gene Shane” watering our eyes with our review of The Velvet Vampire. Luckily — because we are so exhausted from those two crazed investigations of our favorite actors of yore — “The Case of Sherry Miles,” now known as DeBoer, is more easier slice and diced, thanks to her involvement in her own IMDb page, along with the many, loyal websites* dedicated to all things Hee Haw (an old “Kornfield Kountry” TV series that aired on CBS in the ’60s).
So, let’s pay tribute to one of our favorite — and missed — actress of the ’60s and ’70s.
What might have been: Sherry won — then lost — the role of Bobbie to Ann-Margret in Mike Nichols’s Carnal Knowledge (1971) — which also starred the equally burgeoning Jack Nicholson and Candace Bergen. Image courtesy of the Sherry E. DeBoer Archives, via IMDb.
That Teen modeling spread we used for our banner, above, soon transitioned Sherry into an acting career, which began with the pre-Gilligan’s Island Bob Denver series The Good Guys (1969), an early Aaron Spelling series, the counterculture sci-fi drama, The New People (1969), and Medical Center (1969) starring Chad Everett (The Intruder Within). Sherry’s other, early ’70s appearances included the popular series Mod Squad, Nanny and the Professor, Pat Paulsen’sHalf a Comedy Hour, The Name of the Game, The High Chaparral, The Beverly Hillbillies, Adam 12, Love American Style, and The Partridge Family (Sherry over Susan Dey, every day of the week — and twice on Sundays!). As we crossed the nation’s bicentennial, Sherry appeared on the popular series Baretta with Robert Blake (Corky), Police Woman with Angie Dickinson (Big Bad Mama), Richie Brockelman, Private Eye with future director Dennis Dugan (Love, Weddings & Other Disasters), and Wonder Woman with Lynda Carter (Bobbi Joe and the Outlaw). And let’s not forget Sherry’s 26-episode run as part of the comedy ensemble on the homegrown variety show Hee Haw* during its 1971 to 1972 season.
A one-time heiress to the Hawaii-based Long’s Drug Store chain (now owned and operated by CVS since 2008; I’m in there, often), Sherry Miles got married, became a DeBoer, and retired from the business after her final, on-camera appearance during the third season of Wonder Woman. Since her retirement, she’s become a long-respected animal rights activist.
Adorable. Sherry in 1969 on Pat Paulsen’s Half a Comedy Hour/Walt Disney Television.
Some of Sherry’s films you may not know. Others you have seen. And, hopefully, after this “Exploring” feature, you’ll search out the others. But you’ll surely revisit with Sherry in everyone’s favorite film of her career: The Velvet Vampire, a film so gosh-darn fine that, no offense to Sherry, intended: even if she weren’t in it . . . basically, we’re telling you to put The Velvet Vampire on your must-watch list, unintended insults to Sherry, be damned.
Okay, let’s unpack Sherry’s all-too-brief, big screen career, shall we?
Cry For Poor Wally (1969)
Everything . . . ended up on VHS in the ’80s. Everything.
Russell Johnson (the Professor of Gilligan’s Island fame) stars as the small town sheriff in this “based on a true story” crime-drama filmed in Dallas, Texas. Johnson confronts Wally (a very good Keith Rothschild in his only film role; Johnson is equally fine): a fugitive on the run who takes a woman hostage in a diner with the goal of staying out of prison — no matter the cost. As Johnson tries to talk down Wally, the story flashes back as to the “why” it all happened: upon the death of his mother, his father leaves (abandons) him for greener pastures; his girlfriend (Sherry Miles) also contributes to his psychotic break.
Keep your eyes open for another slight-resume actress in Barbara Hancock, who we enjoyed in her fourth and final film, the “GP” horror film, The Night God Screamed (1972). In addition to Russell and Sherry, this is packed with a great cast of familiar character actors of the you-know-them-when-you-see-them variety of Elisha Cook, Jr., Bill Thurman (!) ,Gene Ross, and Paul Lambert.
Cry for Poor Wally proved to be the only producing and directing effort by Marty Young. Screenwriter Marshall Riggan followed with the Christian apocalypse drama Six-Hundred & Sixty Six (1972) and completed his features career with the lost, psychological horror, So Sad About Gloria (1973).
There’s a copy on the Internet Archive to stream. There’s also a ten-minute highlight reel — of its opening diner scene — courtesy of our friends at Scarecrow Video on You Tube, who also contributed the film’s full-digitized upload to the IA.
To say Sam and I love this movie — Sherry’s presence, aside — is a well-worn trope.
The Phynx are a manufactured band — kind of like the Monkees meets Stripes — made up of A. “Michael” Miller, Ray Chipperway, Dennis Larden and Lonny Stevens. They’re trained in all manner of espionage, as well as rock ‘n roll, including meeting Dick Clark, record industry-emissary James Brown, and being taught how to have some “soul” by Richard Pryor. Hey, wait a sec . . . didn’t Cliff Richards and the Shadows do the “spy rock” thing in Finders Keepers (1966)?
At once an indictment of the system and the product of the very hand that it is biting, The Phynx occupies the same weird space as Skidoo, i.e., big-budget Hollywood films trying desperately — and failing — to reach the long-haired hippy audience — like the Monkees with Head — yet failing to understand them at any level. Sort of like the next film on today’s program.
Since this is locked up in the Warner Archive, there’s no streams to share, but here’s a clip on You Tube.
Making It (1971)
Ugh. The marketing of movies.
Based on the theatrical one-sheet and the R-rating, you’re expecting a soft-core sexploitationer: you actually end up with a not-so-bad, smart “coming of age” teen dramedy. As it should be: it’s written by Peter Bart (for 20th Century Fox), who you known best as the co-host, with film executive Peter Guber, of AMC’s film talk and interview programs Shootout and Storymakers, as well as Encore’s In the House. True movieheads known, that, after his screenwriting career, Bart was a writer at the New York Times, an Editor-In Chief at Variety, and later a Vice President of Production at Paramount Studios. While serving as the screenwriting debut for Bart, Making It was also the feature film debut for longtime TV director John Erman (Outer Limits, My Favorite Martian, Star Trek: TOS); continuing with TV series, Erman directed numerous TV movies into the early-2000s.
While Sherry Miles is what brought us here: we’re also captivated by a cast that features early roles for the familiar Bob Balaban (made his debut in in the iconic Midnight Cowboy), David Doyle (yep, Bosley from TV’s Charlie’s Angels), character actor extraordinaire John Fiedler, Denny Miller, Lawrence Pressman, and Tom Troupe, along with the brother-sister thespian duo of Dick and Joyce Van Patten.
Based on the ’60s best-seller, What Can You Do?, a very young Kristoffer Tabori (later of Brave New World and a Star Wars video game voice artist) stars as Phil Fuller: a 17-year-old ne’er-do-well clone of David Cassidy (who would have been perfect in the “grown up” role) living with his widowed mother (Joyce Van Patten). He quenches his self-centered needs by using the girls in his school (prom queen, Sherry Miles), his nerdy best friend (a very young Bob Balaban), and his basketball coach (Denny Miller) — by taking up with his wife (Marlyn Mason). Meanwhile, Joyce Van has or own sexual issues: she’s facing the thoughts of an abortion after shacking up with an insurance agent (played by her brother!). Then Phil, himself, deals with the issues of abortion when he gets one of his high school-conquests, pregnant.
In the end, what you get in the frames of Making It is not a sexploitation comedy, or even a “coming of age” dramedy, but an insightful examination of a pre-Roe vs. Wade world regarding the legalities surrounding abortions (then illegal in California, where this takes place, but legal in New York, where a Patten’s character considers going to get one).
It’s pretty heavy stuff of a time and place, but without the favorable atmosphere of Fast Times of Ridgemont High — if that film centered soley on Mike Damone knocking up Stacy Hamilton. My youthful nostalgia for movies like this slide in nicely next to an early Sam Elliot in Lifeguard, Dennis Christopher in California Dreaming, and the genre change-up with Cathy Lee Crosby in Coach. Your own nostalgia mileage — and for all films Sherry Miles — may vary.
My enjoyment of this movie, which serves as the suffix-title to this retrospective on Sherry Miles, is unbound. Sherry is not only stellar in it: so is the cast, under the pen and lens of Stephanie Rothman. Simply put: this is a beautiful, creepy film.
Swinging Lee Ritter and his vapid, but pretty wife, Susan (Sherry Miles), make the mistake of accepting the art gallery invitation of a mysterious, red-dressed vixen, Diane LeFanu (Celeste Yarnall), to visit her secluded, desert estate. The couple soon discover Diane is a centuries-old vampire — and both are objects of her bisexual thirsts.
The Todd Killings (1971)
Also known as Maniac in the VHS ’80s.
Fans of the based-in-fact teen murder tale of River’s Edge (marketed on the later VHS “slasher” reissues as Maniac; it’s why we rented it) will enjoy Sherry Miles’s second — after Cry for Poor Wally — true crime drama, this one based on the true story of ’60s thrill-killer Charles Schmid, known as “The Pied Piper of Tuscon.”
The film was inspired by a March 1966 Life magazine article about the killings, which, in turn, inspired the 1966 short anthology story “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” Schmid’s exploits were also loosely adapted into the Treat Williams-starring Smooth Talk (1985), as well as the (woefully inferior) films Dead Beat (1994) and The Lost (2005).
Skipper Todd (an outstanding Robert F. Lyons, a much-seen ’60s TV actor in his fourth feature film, but first starring role) is a charismatic, 23-year old ne’er-do-well who charms his way into the lives of out-of-his-age-bracket high school kids in a small California town. The girls, of course, fall instantly for him and head out to the desert for some romantic fun — only never to return. As in the true crimes that inspired River’s Edge, Todd, aka Schmid, was assisted by his girlfriend and best friend in luring, killing, and burying the victims. Shocking for its time, Belinda J. Montgomery and Richard Thomas are frontal nude; Montgomery’s is cut from the later VHS versions.
As with Cry for Poor Wally, this is another one of those lost, underrated gems — it’s heartbreaking for all concerned, even the beyond salvation Skipper Todd — of the Drive-In era rediscovered, not during the UHF-TV ’70s, but the home video ’80s. The quality comes courtesy of its familiar cast of a just-starting-out Richard Thomas (as Skipper’s loyal hanger-on buddy), along with Edward Asner, Barbara Bel Geddes, James Broderick, Michael Conrad (remember the gruff commander on Hill Street Blues?) Gloria Grahame, and Fay Spain. Also keep your eyes open for musician-actress Holly Near in her third role; she made her debut in the critically lambasted Angel, Angel Down WeGo (1969).
There’s no trailers or streams to share — well, there’s a You Tube Italian-dub to skim — but the DVDs abound in the online marketplace. This is a great film. It’s also a nihilistic, downbeat one, but still worthy of a watch.
Calliope (1971)
The new and improved Calliope.
“Spoofs today’s sex films (i.e., porn) the way Batman spoofed Super Heroes!” — tagline for the original, first release of Calliope
I just can’t see my dearest Sherry signing on the dotted line for a goofy, post-Russ Meyer wannabe skinflick that proclaims: “It spreads, and spreads, and spreads,” only to equate its comedy to a beloved Adam West TV series. Obviously, what was presented during negotiations to Sherry, and what was distributed to theaters, differed. Wildly. But what else should we have expected from writer-director Matt Climber, he who gave us The Black Six (1973), Pia Zadora in Butterfly (1981), and a sex-bent take on Indiana Jones with Yellow Hair and the Fortress of Gold (1984)?
Well, this movie. That’s what. And this one is truly a lost film.
So much for producing an Americanized remake of the significant and cinematically-respected La Ronde (1950), a 1900s-era, spicy-romantic, French-language comedy by German-born director Max Ophüls, which earned a 1952 “Best Screenplay” Oscar nod. He also repeated that Oscar feat with his next film, Le Plaisir (1952), which earned a 1955 nod for its Art Direction, done by Max, himself. So loved was La Ronde in its homeland, as well as across Europe, Roger Vadim (Barbarella) updated the film as Circle of Love (1964), with his soon-to-be lover, Jane Fonda. As for the Ophüls original: it took four years before U.S. film sensors approved the film, sans cuts, for theater showings in 1954.
As for the U.S. remake, originally released under the title, Calliope, what could go wrong: everything. Didn’t you hear the sound of two-time Oscar-nominated Max Ophüls turning over in his grave?
Both films are concerned with ten people “in various episodes in the endless waltz of love” (they go “round and round,” thus the titles), as they each hop from encounter to encounter . . . and that’s were it all stops. Dead.
Since Americans were still swingin’ from the free-loving, Summer of Love ’60s, and Mike Nichols answered the “sex revolution” charge with the aforementioned Carnal Knowledge (1971) (and Paul Mazursky’s 1969 effort, Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice), Allied Artists (an outgrowth of Monogram Pictures, a library now owned-split among Warner Bros., Metro-Goldwyn-Mayor, and Paramount; Warner owns Calliope) decided that, instead of the main protagonist (now a hippie musician instead of soldier-on-leave) eventually finding love with the partner he started off with (Sherry Miles, now a band groupie, instead of the original’s prostitute) . . . he receives “the gift that goes on giving”: a sexually transmitted disease, i.e., venereal disease, since this was the ’70s and not the AIDS ’80s.
Yuk Yuk.
Calliope (no theatrical one-sheets exist, at least online), needless to say, bombed. Ah, but the “Golden Age of Porn” was in full swing, so Allied Artists didn’t give up: a year later, in 1972, the reimaged Love Is Catching hit the circuit; it opened in, of all places, the home base of B&S About Movies: Pittsburgh. It bombed, again, and harder than a Richard Harrison Philippine film he was edited-into and never signed on to do.
This soft-sexploitation romp causes me to reflex on poor Gerald McRaney and Tom Selleck, each scoring their first major roles in Night of Bloody Horror and Daughters of Satan, respectively. The scripts are pretty good . . . and work is work . . . and they thesp’d up a sweat to make it all work . . . then J.N Houck, Jr., and worse, in Tom Selleck’s case, since U.S. major, United Artists, backed it, cheesed the films with exploitative ad campaigns. Just like Calliope. And Skidoo. And Myra Breckinridge.
Sherry, six films in to her career, and just missing out on a co-starring role with Jack Nicholson in one of Mike Nichols best films — a frank, adult-discussion of modern-day sexual issues — was deserving of a better, leading lady role than this STD sex farce.
Sure, it’s a well-shot picture, and the acting is pretty decent (we have great character actors Marjorie Bennett and Stan Rose, on board). And it’s not all that bad; sure, modernizing from the early 1900s to the late 1960s is inspired. And it’s not at all porny, since the sex scenes are implied, more than shown . . . but I still have this need to go back in time and kick someone . . . for having my sweet Sherry transmitting VD in a movie.
But things are looking up, nicely, with our next feature.
The Ballad of Billie Blue (1972)
Also known as Starcrossed Road on ’80s VHS shelves.
From a sexploitation flick to a Christian cinema obscurity: only in Tinseltown, baby. And while his name is nixed from the one-sheet (whatever, Plekker, nice n’ cheesy paste-up work): the writer-director here is Ken Osborne, the man behind the pen and lens on the biker flick Wild Wheels (1969). He also appeared in our Uncle Al Adamson’s Blood of Dracula’s Castle (1969), Five Bloody Graves (1969), and Hell’s Bloody Devils (1970).
And there’s more!
In addition to Sherry Miles, we have Marty Allen and Eric Estrada? Ray Danton (too many ’60s to ’70s TV series to mention)? Bruce Kimball (Rollercoaster)? Where’s the VCR. Load the tape. LOAD THE TAPE!
The pedigree is the thing in this imperiled-musician-in-a-spiritual-crisis tale, not only with our director, Ken Osborne: the scribe behind this Christploitationer, Ralph Luce, also wrote Wild Wheels. Why, yes, that’s Robert Dix and William Kerwin from Satan’s Sadists, and Herschell Gordon Lewis’s Blood Feast, respectively, in the cast, as well as, again, a very youthful, pre-CHiPs Erik Estrada. And we mention Erik a second time, since this second film in his career was also his second Christploiter. The first was The Cross and the Switchblade, which starred ’60s crooner Pat Boone, as directed by Don Murray (Conquest of the Planet of the Apes).
The Ballad of Billie Blue is the tale of a drug-and-boozed out country music star — our faux-message “Jesus Christ” of the proceedings — sent to prison, aka Hell, on a bum murder rap; he finds God by way of a prison preacher and a Christ-following country music star.
Regardless of its secular, exploitative pedigree, this was Rated-G — and it ran as a “Special Church Benefit” in rural theaters, as well as in churches and tent revivals. Granted it’s no country-cautionary tale in the vein of A Star Is Born (1976) with Kris Kristofferson, but it’s not a total disaster.
I still say the Oscar-winning dramedy Sideways (2004) starring Paul Giamatti (in the Beau Bridges role) and Thomas Haden Church (in the Rob Liebman role) stole this movie lock, stock, and wine bottle. But I digress. . . .
So . . . the ’70s and their slew of ne’er-do-well “buddy films” were entertaining times, with the likes of Midnight Cowboy (1969), starring Jon Voight and Dustin Hoffman, Busting (1974), with Elliott Gould and Robert Blake, Freebie and the Bean (1974), starring Alan Arkin and James Caan, and Let’s Do It Again (1975), with Bill Cosby and Sidney Poitier.
My old Pop loved his “buddy films,” so you didn’t have to sell us twice — especially when the buddies are Beau Bridges and Ron Liebman. And we ain’t hatin’ Janet Margolin in the frames, either. Mom and Pop dumped me at the sitter to see this back when; I watched it later, amid the ultra-high frequency haze of my pre-cable TV youth. All, of course, were rented, again, when they hit home video.
Oh, and speaking of Sideways: this isn’t just a buddy film. You know all of those Judd Apatow, gross-out “road movies” you love: this is where that road, began. Only without any of the Paul Rudd or Seth Rogen annoyance aftertaste.
Charlie (a perfectly cast Beau Bridges) is a henpecked office drone-doormat at a dead-end job, engaged to harping woman (Janet Margolin, Planet Earth). The lone spark in his life is his “idol,” Mike (an even more perfectly cast Rob Liebman), a narcissistic and misogynistic, well, dickhead, of a buddy. So, to get Charlie out from under his soon-to-be-loveless marriage — and his own, mounting debts and his recently cut-off unemployment benefits — the pair hits the roads of the California coast on Mike’s last two, usable credit cards, subsidized by a little bit of larceny. Along the way, the pick up two, nubile hippie chicks (in the expertly cast) June Fairchild (Up In Smoke) and Sherry Miles.
So, somewhere in the frames is a message about America’s newfound “liberation” forged in the ’60s (more effectively done with Beau’s brother, Jeff, in 1974’s Thunderbolt and Lightfoot), but while this warms the ol’ UHF-TV cockles of watching it with ol’ Pop all those years ago, Your Three Minutes Are Up is an erratic, rambling TV movie-flat messadventure that could have easily went the bloody-serial killer route — if not for its purposeful, comedic slant. Think Easy Rider sans the drugs and bikes, or Five Easy Pieces with Liebman as our ersatz Jack Nicholson, and you’re on the right road in this still, effectively cast and well-acted adventure.
Look, Steven Hilliard Stern (The Park Is Mine) is directing . . . so what’s not to like, here?
Well, uh, not much, in this woefully dated “sex revolution” tale that sequels the box office hit, The Harrad Experiment (1973), which grossed $3 million against $400,000.
So, why did this sure-fire hit, flop?
Well, the character of James Whitmore (Brooks Hatlen in The Shawshank Redemption) doesn’t return. Tippi Hedren’s does, but is replaced by a lookalike in Emmaline Henry (Ms Amanda Bellows from TV’s I Dream of Jeannie). And Don Johnson and Bruno Kirby bowed out. Sure, Laurie Walters (Warlock Moon; later TV’s Eight Is Enough), who made her acting debut in the original, is back, and so is bit TV actress Victoria Thompson, but who is coming to see either? And we want more Sherry Miles, thank you.
Note to executives: When you loose three quarters of your cast, don’t make the sequel.
Anyway, the premise is that faux-Stanley and Harry, along with real-Sheila and Beth, are out on summer break from their first year at Harrad College: it’s time to test their new found sexual freedom in the real world. Or something. Like going back and re-watching Bob & Ted & Carol & Alice and Carnal Knowledge.
Hey, I champion Stern’s TV work just as much as my fellow fan of the VHS obscure, but this is simply yawn-inducing . . . .the total opposite of The Harrad Experiment, which has Don and Bruno — especially Bruno — going for it. Robert Reiser and Richard Doran in their places, well . . . they’re not awful: they just don’t have the same spunk to make the hippie proceedings, hep.
No streams, but the DVDs are out there; here’s the trailer.
Okay. So, the heart breaker and dream maker of my wee-lad years, Sherry Miles, closes out her career by running around an island with Joe Don Baker to escape a pack of wild dogs . . . get this: under the lens of Robert Clouse of Enter the Dragon, Black Belt Jones, and Golden Needles fame?
Load. The. Tape. Now.
Sure, this beat Stephen’s King’s Cujoto theaters and was all about a literal army of dogs biting everyone on Seal Island — which has nothing on Dog Island from Humongous. So, was Robert Clouse inspired by the 1976 film starring David McCallum that you don’t want to confuse with The Pack, aka Dogs? Probably. No, not Devil Dog: Hound of Hell (1978), as that one starred Richard Crenna. Get your horror dog movies, straight, buddy! Did Clouse’s dog romp inspire Earl Owensby’s (Dark Sunday) backwater sheriff fighting off government-bred mutts in Dogs of Hell (1983)? Probably.
What else can we say: it’s a killer dog movie. Not even Sherry’s presence can save it. But horror was hot and, as an actor, you jump the trend and hope for a hit. Well, it is to us, at B&S About Movies. We’re weird that way.
There’s no freebie streams, but the PPVs are out there; here’s the trailer.
The blue eyes and crooked smile that launched a thousand ships: Sherry, in her final role for an episode of TV’s Wonder Woman.Imagine Sherry going “Scream Queen” and dominating the Slasher ’80s . . . what might have been.
So wraps this latest “Exploring” featuring, this one on (sigh . . . skyrockets . . . rainbows . . . fields of flowers . . . hearts with angel wings) Sherry Miles. Be sure to click the “Exploring” tag below to read the full list of all of our “Exploring” features on the lost, forgotten and awesome actors and directors, as well as genres, of the Drive-In ’60s, the UHF-TV ’70s, and VHS ’80s eras.
Yeah, we’re doin’ it for the celluloid love. And because we’re just crazy that way. This is B&S About Movies, after all.
* Learn more about Hee Haw at this Alchetron.com fan site.
Some of our other actor and director career explorations include:
Yeah, I know . . . Mickey Rooney was a big star in the 1930s and 1940s, and, for most, seeing him in an ersatz, horrified version of the noir classic Sunset Blvd. is considered a fall from grace, but I really like him here. His work as B.J Lang is as memorable to me as was his work as the mentally handicapped Bill Sackter in the CBS-TV movies Bill (1981) and Bill: On His Own (1983). Yeah, I know, this forgotten Rooney resume entry is on a Mill Creek box set, which leads the many to write off the movie as a “stinker” and that the Mick is slumming, and that we’ve seen it done better with Terrance Stamp and Samatha Eggar in The Collector (1965).
Chalk up my affections for the film as result of seeing it for the first time on my first solo drive-in excursion with a few friends on an undercard with Let’s Scare Jessica to Death (1971) . . . and for the life of me, I can’t remember the main feature. . . . Brainworm alert!
In the world of exploitation, you’ve heard the term “hagsploitation” mentioned to describe aging actresses, aka hags, regulated to finding work in horror films, holding on the last vestiges of their once glamorous, contract player-studio system careers.
And we’ve reviewed most, if not all of them.
Edith Atwater was just one of the many, ’40s starlets finding work in the hagploitation, aka psychobiddy, sub-genre: a genre where old, crusty women either terrorized “sinning” young women or are simply jealous of the girl’s youth, so they “gaslight” them into insanity. You know Edith Atwater, best, from Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi’s The Body Snatcher (1945), which was her third feature film; she also appeared in Strait-Jacket (1964) with Joan Crawford — herself a “hag” actress with the likes of Berserk! and Trog. Edith then fell into a lot of TV work for the remainder of her career into the mid-’80s to pay the bills. In between, she did another hagster with Die Sister, Die!(1971).
In line behind Joan Crawford was Tallulah Bankhead with Die! Die! My Darling!(1965), studio starlet Veronica Lake, who took her final bow with Flesh Feast (1970), Wanda Hendrix closing out her career at the age of 44 with the Gothic, Civil War tale, the really fine The Oval Portrait (1972; another Mill Creek recycler), and ex-20th Century Fox studio-starlet Jeanne Crain attempted an early ’70s comeback with The Night God Screamed (1971).
So, if the women are packed in a “hagsploitation” crate . . . where does that leave the older, male actors, such as Mickey Rooney? Such a film is B.J Lang Presents — a film which falls under the “trollsplotation” tag* used to describe aging actors stuck in horror films — a film that found a new, video ’80s shelf live under the title, The Manipulator.
So, you’ve noticed the name of Luana Anders in the credits?
Yes, that means this Rooney tour de force also fits nicely into the hag-cycle of ’70s horror films. We first enjoyed Anders in the teensploitationer Reform School Girl (1957), but remember her best for the incessant UHF-TV replays of The Pit an the Pendulum (1961) and Dementia 13 (1963). By the late ’60s, with an A-List film career not coming to fruition, Anders, like many actors, transitioned to television, appearing in the likes of That Girl, The Andy Griffith Show, and Hawaii Five-O, just to name a few.
The writer and director behind the madness, as it were, is Yabo Yablonsky, in his debut in both fields. His is a name know you known courtesy of his Sly Stallone connection for writing the WW II soccer-war drama, Victory (1981). In between, Yabo gave us the forgotten TV films — which played as Euro-theatricals — Revenge for a Rape (1976) and Portrait of a Hitman (1979), courtesy of their starring then/still hot Mike Connors (then of TV’s Mannix fame) and Jack Palance (with Rod Steiger, Bo Svenson, Ann Turkel, and Richard Roundtree), respectively. Of course, martial arts junkies know Yabo best for giving Joe Lewis — one of only five men to beat Chuck Norris in the ring — his film debut in Jaguar Lives! (1979)**.
Okay, enough with the backstory. Let’s unpack this film . . . one where Mickey Rooney cuts loose in an amazing performance. (Yes, amazing. This is my review, after all.)
The plot is simple: Rooney is the once respected, Hollywood’s premiere makeup man, B.J Lang, who, ironically, aged out of the business and has been tossed aside by the glitzy-guady Grauman’s Chinese Theatre crowd. So he snaps and kidnaps an actress (Anders), holding her hostage in an abandoned prop house on a forgotten studio backlot to “star” as Roxanne to his Cyrano in his “movie” version of Cyrano De Bergerac — made of his own reality mixed with his hallucinations. To that end: Mick’s talking to mannequins and people who aren’t there, as he longs for the days — as did the off-her-nut Norma Desmond in Sunset Blvd. (1950) — when he had the ear of Cecil B. DeMille.
Yablonsky may be — as you can tell from his continued work as a writer (which included lots of uncredited “doctoring” work) — a decent writer, but he’s no director of distinction. Clearly, he’s influenced by the earliest splatters of Italian Giallo, here, (mixed with a soupçon of Phantom of the Opera; the 1925 version with Lon Chaney, Sr. or Claude Rains 1943 version, take your pick), hence the creepy mannequins — and more so as B.J Lang remembers the gold ol’ days of putting makeup on Marilyn Monroe: so he puts the makeup on himself and struts around like the actress — as an ersatz Norman Bates. Then there’s the zoomin’ n’ swooshin’ experimental camera movements, the shakes, the psycho color palate — and for a little ’60s acid tripping, lots of strobe lights. So, in the directing and cinematography departments, many opine there’s no class nor style. Uh, maybe they’re right: the proceedings are more of an attempt to copy Mario Bava than to bring anything unique to the lens. Name a camera trick. Yabo’s got it jammed in there, somewhere in the frames. As with his actors: he’s going for it and making an impression.
Hags n’ trolls in one box set! And Shannon Tweed. But no Gene.
In the end this is a Rooney and Andres joint (more so for Rooney) — with a slight cameo by Kennan Wynn as wino bum squatting in the theater (who Rooney subsequently ofts) — with the duo going at it with gusto, which, for me, makes it worth the watch.
This pretty much got (very) loosely remade-ripped (more effectively) as Fade to Black (1980) and that film, as with The Manipulator, also has more detractors than fans. You can watch a free-rip of The Manipulator on You Tube. Of course, it’s available on Mill Creek’s Drive-In Movie Classics 50-movie pack, which we are featuring all this month at B&S About Movies.
* You need more trollsploitation flicks with aged-out and down-and-out A-List actors reinventing themselves in a 70s horror film? Then look no further than Tony Curtis in The Manitou and BrainWaves (the latter also with Keir Dullea), Kirk Douglas in Holocaust 2000, Rock Hudson in Embryo, Fritz Weaver in Demon Seed.
** We’ve reviewed the films of two of Chuck’s other opponents: Tonny Tulleners in Scorpion (1986) and Ron Marchini, whose career we dedicated a week of reviews.
About the Author: You can learn more about the writings of R.D Francis on Facebook. He also writes for B&S About Movies.
EDITOR’S NOTE: We wrote about this moldy oldie (in the best of ways) back on March 4, 2020.
Will to Die? Blood Legacy? Legacy of Blood?
Whatever you call it, this 1971 film has a plot as old as movies themselves — a patriarch gathers his family to hear his will. Carl Monson, who wrote The Acid Eaters and also directed Please Don’t Eat My Mother was behind this.
This is the last movie for Rodolfo Acosta, who either played Mexicans or Native Americans in Westerns usually. John Carradine is also in this — of course, this movie was made for him — and Richard Davalos (Blind Dick from Cool Hand Luke and the cover image for The Smiths albums “Strangeways, Here We Come” and two of their greatest hits collections), Faith Domergue (Perversion Story), former pro wrestler Buck Kartalian, Jeff Morrow (The Creature Walks Among Us) and John Russell, who replaced James Doogan on the second season of Jason of Star Command.
Yes, the outside of the house is also the same mansion that was used for Wayne Manor. You haven’t gone completely bats yet.
Maurizio Lucidi is probably better known for his westerns like My Name Is Pecos than any other movies he made. After watching this giallo, I wish he had done more in the genre.
Stefano Augenti disillusioned advertising executive (Tomas Milan) gets all Strangers On a Train with the unsavory Count Matteo Tiepolo (Pierre Clémenti) and come up with a plan to take out one another’s problem relatives. Stefano agrees to kill the count’s brother, who is in the way of his rightful inheritance, whole Tiepolo will kill the ad man’s wife who refuses to cash out of his business.
Matteo starts playing with Stefano and informs his supposed partner’s wife about the plan before she’s strangled. He has the evidence that will keep the police off Stefano, but will only send it if his brother is murdered as agreed upon.
Milan even contributed the lyrics and vocals to a song in this movie, “My Shadow in the Dark,” which was performed by the New Trolls.
The Mondo Macabro release of this movie has a new 4k transfer from the original film negative as well as interviews with writer and assistant director Aldo Lado and Balthazar Clementi. Plus, there’s commentary by Peter Jilmstad and Rachael Nisbet, as well as an exclusive extended version and alternate scenes.
Also known as Bloody Mary and Nights ofTerror, this Osvaldo Civirani-directed kinda, sorta giallo stars one of the queens of the genre, Carrol Baker, as well as Stephen Boyd and George Hilton.
Baker plays two roles in here, identical twins Mary and Julie. While Julie is just an innocent on a working holiday in Holland, her sister is a diamond thief who has even sold her own husband out to get ahead.
I say kinda sorta as while this movie looks like a giallo and is named like one, it’s closer to a crime caper or even the Eurospy. Sure, someone is spying on our heroine, but nobody with black gloves is stabbing anyone and there are no psychosexual hijinks.
But hey — I love Baker and this has some fun twists and turns, as well as some romance. Consider it giallo adjacent, I guess.
First, it’s confused with German director Eberhard Schröder’s Die Klosterschülerinnen, aka The Convent Students, which also made the rounds as Sex Life in a Convent, but is also known as . . . Girls in Trouble.
Second, that film, and this Sybil Danning vehicle (well, not really) is not only co-directed by Schröder: both star German glamour model and Euro-sex kitten Doris Arden (1968’s So Much Naked Tenderness and 1972’s Nurse Report).
Third, while it’s a softcore skinflick (uh, not really), it ends up on “Christploitation” lists due to its anti-abortion and pro-life slant in its chronicle of several pregnant women on their way to get abortions.
Finally, while it played across Europe in 1971, it finally made it to America during the height of the “Golden Age of Porn”* on U.S. shores as The Joy of Love.
But this ain’t no porn . . . or the least bit golden. And there’s no joy in watching it. And it’s not a Christian flick . . . or the least bit saving. Everybody got duped with this one. No one was entertained by it and everybody hated it. But what else would you expect from a film that markets both the porn and God-believing markets?
Lacking a fluid narrative, the film actually plays as a series of documentary-styled vignettes. So what we really have here is an omnibus films of seven tales on the dangers and horrors of abortion. And now you see why it ends up on Christploitation lists.
In the first tale, two women are in court over a botched kitchen-abortion. Then, we meet a kidnapped and raped 13-year old girl forced to keep her baby because the law doesn’t allow abortions. In the third tale, a knocked up young lady has a miscarriage forced upon her. Then, we’re inside a mobile — and illegal — abortion clinic. Then a secretary is raped by her boss, who then send her to the U.K. for an abortion. We also meet a woman who visits an abortion doctor who drugs her and takes porn-pictures of her to make some pocket change. And in the final, seventh tale, a young, pregnant girl begs a doctor for an abortion; he calls in priest to read her the riot act.
So, what happened back in that opening court room scene?
Well, the old bag with the kitchen knife who almost murdered the young woman, gets three years. The girl — who was almost murdered, mind you — gets six months in jail because, well, she’s a “slut” that already had a child previously that she gave up for adoption.
As you can see, this West Germany ditty is far from being a skin flick. And it’s just one of those oddball flicks you spotted behind the green curtain* during the video store ’80s because Sybil Danning’s presence sells the tape — then you discover she’s only the wife of the judge from the first segment, she’s not an aborter or abortee, and she shows us no skin. And the whole movie is actually pretty disgusting and you start to wonder what the big deal was about you finally aging-in to get behind the green curtain.
Obviously, there’s no trailer to show you or links to stream it online. But make no mistake: this offensive lesson in tedium that would give Ed Wood pause, exists. Sybil Danning fans can skip this — we implore you, skip this — and go directly to Malibu Express or They’re Playing with Fire.
Oh, and beware of Eberhard Schröder skin flick rabbit holes. It’s a sexually twisted filmography you’d rather not know about. Trust us. Don’t do it. (But you know you will.)
* We delve into the “Golden Age of Porn” and “Behind the Green Curtain” eras with our joint review of Forced Entry (1973) and The Last Victim (1975), along with Spine (1986) from our “SOV Week” of reviews.
About the Author: You can learn more about the writings of R.D Francis on Facebook.He also writes for B&S About Movies.
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