Ellie (Tiffany Bolling, The Candy Snatchers) and Myra Thomas (Robin Mattson, Candy Stripe Nurses) leave behind their abusive stepfather with a shotgun blast and make their way to Los Angeles and the home of their Uncle Ben (Scott Brady), who involves the two of them in a moey-laundering scheme. But Ellie knows the score and soon takes the money for herself, instructing her sister to meet her and Larry (Steven Sandor), the mark she’s conned, in El Paso. But things aren’t going to work out for them.

Director and writer Arthur Marks’ father was an assistant director on The Wizard of Oz and spent thirty years at MGM, which is where Arthur worked in the production department. His films, The Roommates, Detroit 9000, Bucktown, J.D.’s Revenge, Friday Foster, The Monkey Hu$tle, The Centerfold Girls and Linda Lovelace for President all filled a need big studios could care less about: drive-in programmers.

Every man in this movie is scum. There’s a moment in the beginning where a whole bunch of old men get drunk, sweaty and strange, sexually harassing Ellie who responds with sheer hatred. Was I in love? You know it. This also has Eddy (Alex Rocco) and Digger (Tim Brown) as two killers who in no way were totally taken by Tarantino in Pulp Fiction. Oh, he titled a chapter “The Bonnie Situation?” Well, at least he admits it.

Beware! The Blob or Son of the Blob is a big idea to get your head around. While the original was presented as horror, this film pretty much leans into how ridiculous it all is. Written by Anthony Harris and Jack Woods from a story by Richard Clair and Jack H. Harris, a lot of this was improvised on set, and the script—even though it took all those people—was mostly ignored.

Harris was also the producer, and Anthony was his college graduate son. They were next door neighbors with Larry Hagman — who had previously directed episodes of I Dream of Jeannie and The Good Life — who had never seen The Blob. Harris screened his print for the actor/director, who loved it and said that he could get a lot of his Hollywood friends to show up and get blobbed, as long as he could direct.

Fifteen years after the original Blob destroyed parts of Pennsylvania, Chester (Godfrey Cambridge) has brought a piece of that creature from its frozen grave in the North Pole, where he does the sensible thing and puts it in the fridge. It grows in size as it eats a fly, a kitten, and then his wife, Marianne (Marlene Clark). Finally, while Chester watches The Blob on TV, it eats him too, just in time for Lisa (Gwynne Gilford) to watch him get claimed by the creature.

As she tries to get her boyfriend Bobby (Robert Walker Jr.). to believe what she’s seen, the red jelly eats its way through Los Angeles, claiming the lives of two hippies (Randy Stonehill and Cindy Williams) in a storm drain — were they looking for Simon? — as well as officer Sid Haig, chickens, horses, a bar, a gas station, Scoutmaster Dick Van Patten, a barber (Shelley Berman) and even some home-displaced folks (Hagman, Burgess Meredith and Del Close, who is wearing an eyepatch as his cornea was scratched by a cat previous to filming; he’d return with a similar look as Reverend Meeker in perhaps the best horror remake of all time, 1988’s The Blob).

It takes an ice rink — which was torn down shortly after filming — to stop the monster — maybe — this time. As for the bowling alley in this movie, it’s Jack Rabbit Slims from Pulp Fiction.

In the first movie, the Blob was made of silicone and dyed red. It had to be stirred throughout the movie to keep its color. This Blob was made from a red-dyed powder blended with water, as well as a big red plastic balloon, red plastic sheeting and a red drum of hard red silicone spun in front of the camera. Tim Baar and Conrad Rothmann created these effects, and beyond working on the second unit camera, Dean Cundey helped, years before he’d become such a force in filmmaking.

In 1982, when Hagman was on Dallas and the shooting of his character J.R. Ewing was the biggest moment in pop culture, this was re-released with the headline “The film that J.R. shot!”

You can watch this on Tubi.

I knew the song “Ben” better than Ben the movie, but now, I know both.

Remember when Willard Stiles was killed by Ben and all the rats when he finally tried to kill them? Well, you get to see it again when this movie starts and we follow Ben until he meets Danny Garrison (Lee Harcourt Montgomery, Burnt Offerings), a lonely boy with a heart condition. They become best friends — until now, Danny only has his mother, Beth (Rosemary Murphy) and sister, Eve (Meredith Baxter) — and Danny does fun stuff like write songs for them, put on marionette shows for their amusement and create a train ride for them.

Rats are rats, however, and they go nuts, attacking food trucks, grocery stores, and people, all while they help Danny get over bullies, loneliness and probably dying soon.

Directed by Phil Karlson (The Wrecking Crew, Walking Tall) and written by Gilbert Ralston (the creator of The Wild, Wild West), this has an ending where you will care about a rat more than you thought was possible. Seriously, I got weepy. Over a rat. A rat that got to ride in a train, dammit, not I’m crying again.

The first five and a half minutes of 1972’s All the Colors of the Dark (also known as Day of the Maniac and They’re Coming to Get You!) subvert what I call Giallo’s “graphic beauty” in intriguing ways.

An outdoor scene of a stream slowly darkens, replaced by an old crone with blackened teeth, dressed as a child and a dead pregnant woman are both made up to be anything but the gorgeous creatures we’ve come to expect from these films; even star Edwige Fenech (The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh, Five Dolls for an August Moon and so many more that I could go on and on about) isn’t presented in her usual role of a sex symbol. She’s covered in gore, eyes open and lifeless. As the camera zooms around the room and begins to spin, we see a road superimposed and hear a car crash. Even when Edwige’s character in this film, Jane Harrison, wakes up to shower, we’re not presented with the voyeuristic spoils that one expects from Giallo’s potent stew of the fantastique and the deadly. She stands fully clothed, the water more a caustic break with the dream world than an attempt at seducing the viewer or cleaning herself.

Again — in a genre where words possess little to no meaning — we are forced to wait five and a half minutes until the first dialogue. Richard (George Hilton, Blade of the Ripper), her husband, bemoans that he must leave but feels that he can’t. His therapy is a glass of blue pills and lovemaking that we watch from above; his penetration of her is intercut with violent imagery of a knife entering flesh.  Instead of the thrill we expect from this coupling, we only sense her distance from the proceedings.

As Richard leaves her behind, we get the idea of the madness within their apartment: a woman makes out on the sidewalk with a young hippy man who asks when he’ll ever see her again. Mary (Marina Malfatti, The Night Evelyn Came Out of Her Grave, The Red Queen Kills Seven Times), a mysterious blonde, glares down at him, somewhat knowingly. His wife looks lost and trapped. Without dialogue, we’ve already sensed that some Satanic conspiracy is afoot. Echoes of Rosemary’s Baby? Sure, but you could say that about every occult-themed 1970s film — the influence is too potent, a tannis root that has infected all of its progeny.

Last year, a car crash took the life of Jane’s unborn child. Her sister Barbara (Nieves Navarro, Death Walks at Midnight, Emanuelle and the Last Cannibals) has advised therapy, which Richard laughs at. As Jane waits to see the doctor, she sees a man with the bluest eyes (Ivan Rassimov from Planet of the Vampires and Django in Don’t Wait, Django…Shoot!) — eyes we’ve seen before, eyes that hint at blood and murder and madness.

Even when surrounded by people, such as on the subway, Jane is lost in her thoughts and in another world, one of inky blackness and isolation punctuated only by the cool blue eyes of the sinister man who tracks her everywhere she goes. Even the teeming masses of the city make her feel more lost; only the light of the above-ground world erases the nightmare of her stalker. That is — until he finds her in the park, where she screams for him to stop following her. The camera is detached, following her from high above, watching her run away, needing the refuge of her home. Even then, the man is still there, banging on the door, demanding to be part of her reality.

The thing is — Richard has no faith in his wife’s sanity. And even when he’s telling her sister, Barbara, how he doesn’t trust psychiatry, he’s also watching her undress in a mirror. This scene really hints that they’ve had sex in the past (perhaps the past was just five minutes ago).

Jane finally finds a kindred soul—her neighbor, Mary, whom we saw earlier in the windows. Mary tells Jane of the Sabbath, the black mass and how it helped her. She sees Jane as a lost soul who needs to be saved and agrees to take her to her church.

The blue-eyed man returns, chasing Jane past a spiraling staircase, ax in hand. The camera spins, making us dizzy as it cuts from the building to the man and from Jane’s car to the man. Jane demands to be allowed to go to the Sabbath as she fears the madness that seems ready to overtake her.

As we approach the old mansion where the rite will occur, we feel more of a sense of belonging, a warmer color palette instead of the washed-out nature of the urban sprawl we’ve experienced until now. Everything is lit by a candle. Mary appears to have achieved a glow, and Jane stands in stark contrast to the beatific zombies of the assembled congregation. A taloned priest murders a dog in front of Jane’s eyes as Mary caresses her (trust me, this isn’t a Fulci realistic dog murder, although I hid my mutt Angelo’s eyes for this scene). The priest tells her that if she drinks the blood, she will be free. Hands and lips and bodies overtake her as an orgy breaks out, a bacchanal that she seems to want none of. This sex is presented as horror, as anything but pleasure, yet Jane seems ill-equipped to resist.

Immediately, we see her enjoying her husband, no longer frigid and everything back to normal, as he says. However, Jane tells her that she doesn’t feel real anymore. She walks to the bathroom, seeing multiple reflections of herself that harken back to the kaleidoscope effect we saw as the priest took her to the altar.

No matter what peace, love, and sex happen, Jane can’t escape the blue-eyed man. Even on a romantic lunch date with her husband, he’s outside waiting for her. A taxi drives her back to her home, the only sanctuary against the invasion that the man presents. As she goes through her husband’s effects, she finds a book of the supernatural emblazoned with a pentagram. He claims it’s just a second-hand book and accuses her of hiding things from him.

Jane returns to the Satanic church, this time willing to give herself over and actually seeming to enjoy lovemaking for the first time in this film. Mary intones, “Now you’ll be free.” Again, the long-fingernail priest takes her while the blue-eyed man watches her, his hands covered in blood. The members of the church dance around her as Mary calls to her. The priest tells her that Mary no longer exists. She is free to go, as she brought Jane to the church. The final act is for Jane to murder her, to send her away. Jane screams that she can’t do it, but Mary tells her that they must part, that this act will free her, as she lowers herself onto the dagger that Jane clutches.

Jane awakens, fully clothed, in a field. The blue-eyed man is there, telling her, “Now you are one of us, Jane. It’s impossible to renounce us.” He offers his hand, telling her to follow him. She’s expected. He takes her to an altar that is the same design as the pendant we just saw her wear during the orgy. She demands to know where Mary is, but the only answer she gets is that she belongs to the cult and will now be protected. Mary is gone, and Jane’s sacrifice allows her to be free. They show her Mary’s body, covered in black lace, as she runs screaming.

Perhaps in retaliation for the ritual, dogs chase her through the woods, tearing at her, stopped only by the blue-eyed man who knocks her out. She awakens, clad in virginal white, surrounded by white sheets. Her husband leaves a note in lipstick on her mirror. She looks, and the symbol is on her arm, which is covered in blood. When she goes to Mary’s apartment, an old woman lives there instead.

Jane is totally lost — the ritual has brought her nothing but more madness and the blue-eyed man even closer. Her husband is away on business, her sister is on vacation, and her therapist is dismissive. Even her apartment walls, which offer security, have become a maze of fear. The colors shift to Bava-esque hues of blackness and reds as we see the blue-eyed man attack her over and over again, with constant repetition of the frame as she screams — and then there’s no one there, just the room filled with red and a broken piece of pottery embedded in her hand.

After examining Jane, the doctor leaves her with an elderly couple. Her husband can’t find her and asks Barbara to help.

Jane awakens in a white room — of course, the blue-eyed man is waiting outside the house in the gauzy early morning hours. Yet there is an ominousness about the proceedings — no one is there. A tea kettle is boiling on the stove while the old man and woman sit there, in still repose, dead at the breakfast table. She’s trapped in the room with them as she frantically calls for help. She tells her doctor that the man is there and has killed everyone. He calmly tells Richard and Barbara that he has another patient to deal with, as he doesn’t trust Richard and wants to keep him in the dark. However, he does reveal the truth to Barbara. That lack of trust goes both ways as Richard follows the doctor.

Meanwhile, the blue-eyed man finds Jane, telling her she cannot renounce them. He tells her that the knife that he holds killed her mother when she tried to deny them. And it’s the same knife that killed the married man. He tells her she is beyond reality and will never find it again.

Following the sound of a hound, she finds the doctor’s car in the driveway — and, of course, he’s dead, too. The blue-eyed man gives chase and finally tries to kill her, but he’s stopped at the last minute by Richard, who stabs him with a rake. He repeatedly stomps on the man’s hand, revealing the tattoo symbol he stares at.

Meanwhile, Mary arrives home to a green-hued apartment, where Richard is smoking and accusing her of being part of black magic. He sees the symbol when he watches her undress, and she tells him that she wants him, that she can make him forget her sister. She promises him untold power and that he can become anyone he wants. As she leans in for a kiss, he shoots her, tossing the envelope of a letter that he received that explains it all.

Cut to a hazy white room where Jane has been given a sedative. An inspector — the priest from the cult! — demands to see her. Richard arrives and embraces her, telling her he will take her out the main door. They speed away in a car and return to their apartment. But all is not well — Richard is killed by an unseen person, and Jane is left holding the dagger. The police who arrest her all have the symbol on their wrists and are led by the leader. The camerawork becomes tighter and claustrophobic as we see the cult descending on her.

Wait — it’s all a Wizard of Oz dream, with the police and her husband at her bedside, explaining the film’s entire plot, which ends up even more ridiculous than everything that we’ve seen up until now (which is really saying something). Turns out there was no real magic. The cult was just a drug ring. Mary was real and just a heroin addict. Her sister was behind it all because she wanted all of the money from the will of their mother’s murderer, who wanted to give 600,000 pounds to both of them.

Jane rejects this reality, saying this cannot be true after all that she’s seen. The cop replies that he kept trying to call her, and she never answered, so he wrote it all in a letter — the letter that Richard showed Barbara after he shot her. It’s worth noting that the American version of the film ends with Jane being killed by the cult and all of the ending — nearly six minutes worth of important story and denouement — exorcised.

We return to where we were, with Richard going upstairs — just like we’ve seen before. Jane screams that she knows what will happen. The cult leader attacks him, blaming her for Barbara’s death. Richard follows him to the roof, where they fight, and the priest is thrown from the roof. Jane tells Richard that she knew the man was there; she knew that her husband had killed her sister, that it wasn’t a suicide, and that some strange force was guiding her. She asks for help, and the credits roll.

With this film, director Sergio Martino (Torso, 2019: After the Fall of New York) crafted an intriguing blend of the supernatural and the Giallo. Even the procedural elements come only after the film has descended into surrealism, as if a cold glass of water has been splashed in the face of a viewer who needs an explanation. Magic is madness, and we can’t even trust our heroine at the end when she begs to escape the power inside her.

This film is terrific, with Edwige Fenech turning in a strong performance. You really feel the isolation and madness that surround her and empathize with her. The strong visuals and the break from the genre conventions of masked killers, gloved hands and inept police make watching this film an absolute joy. From beginning to end, it makes you question not only the reality that it presents but also the objective trustworthiness of our heroine. And while it betrays an obvious inspiration to the aforementioned Rosemary’s Baby, it is not slavish in its devotion, making a powerful statement on its own merit.

Here’s a cocktail recipe.

They’re Coming to Get You

• 1.5 oz. J&B
• .5 oz. lemon juice
• .5 oz. simple syrup
• 1 egg white
• 3 dashes Angostura bitters

1. Shake all ingredients in a cocktail shaker filled with ice.
2. Strain into a glass and enjoy.

There’s an edited version of this movie on YouTube that censors nearly every few words and has nearly half an hour missing. That’s how scuzzy this movie is, a film that feels like you’re in the middle of a New Jersey swamp, covered in toxic waste.

It was directed and written by Don Schain, the first president of the Motion Picture Association of Utah, a man who would go on to produced High School Musical for Disney. But not now. Now, he was making a series of three vanity films with his wife at the time, Cheri Caffaro, who once won a Bardot lookalike contest in Life Magazine. Now, we’re at the center of the Ginger trilogy, which started with — you guessed it — Ginger and will end with Girls Are for Loving.

Ginger McAllister is a tough private eye and super spy who is part of the swinging 70s, the porno chic era, who looks to sex up men instead of waiting for them to ask her. Don’t get too excited about this liberation — Ginger spends much of these movies getting tied up more often than Wonder Woman and assaulted more times than one can count.

The bad guys have figured out how to program women to be sex slaves and are selling them. Ginger is out to stop them, pausing only for an extended dance sequence. In-between the first two movies, Caffaro and Schain got married, so somehow this made her more comfortable getting naked on-screen and having love scenes. And oh, those love scenes. Never has sex felt more repellant and something not worth doing; sweaty, pale men just lying on women, grinding away until they get off. No one seems to be enjoying it, even if this entire movie is all about the lengths people will go to for the girlfriend experience.

One of the kidnapped girls is Jeramie Rain, Sadie from Last House On the Left. And, as if to make this even more offensive, Cheri’s boss Jason Verone (William Granne) is so swishy you feel like Paul Lynde will burst in and tell him to butch it up.

There’s also some great bullshit science in this, as Cheri swallows “radar disks” that are just cough drops so that people know where she is. Why does a roughie need Eurospy gimmicks? I don’t know but I’m happy it’s in this. I do wonder where the Geneva Convention comes into all of this spying, because Ginger has the habit of getting off the bad guys after she captures them. Everybody was fucking in the early 70s in New Jersey, even if they shouldn’t and even if you have no interest in seeing it. Sometimes, women could torture people too and they can still be on the side of good.

The bad guy (Richard Smedley) owns an ad agency, because yes, all advertising people are horrible bastards and I can say that because I’m one of them.

So anyways, like I said, the guy who made this went on to work for Disney. As for Cheri, she wrote and produced H.O.T.S.