Man, I would have never survived the 1970’s. It was too full of sin and sleaze, too many drugs, too many cults. I’m reminded of this every single time I watch a piece of cinematic insanity from that most bonkers of all decades.

Arrow Video has gifted me with one more reminder of why this was the most dangerous and demented of all eras with Toys Are Not for Children.

What can you say about a movie that starts with a young woman playing under the covers — yes, the dirty side of playing — with a doll that her father sent her for her birthday being interrupted by her mother?

Jamie Goddard is that young girl, emotionally stunted by the loss of her father and unable to embrace her sexuality unless it’s within the world of prostitution and daddy/little girl play. She’s played by Marcia Forbes, a one and done actress who was probably chased away by just how insane this entire film is.

Fran Warren, who plays the role of the mother, was a major recording star in the 40’s and 50’s. Perhaps you know her song “A Sunday Kind of Love” or saw her in Abbott and Costello Meet Captain Kidd. She pretty much abuses her daughter, who only finds joy in the toys from daddy and the ones she sells at a toy store. Then she gets married to Charlie and can’t consummate with him — the pull of daddy is too strong.

So she does what any of us would. She falls in with a lesbian prostitute and her pimp, starts making love to dirty old men and finally gets what she always wanted. The chance to be with — and yes, I mean with in the most perverted sense of the world — her father.

Director/writer Stanley H. Brassloff only would direct one other film, Two Girls for a Madman. After watching this, I need to chase down that movie, too.

Make no mistake, this is the kind of movie that is going to make you sick to your stomach. I kind of like that feeling. You may not. It would pair nicely with The Baby or Private Parts. If you’re the kind of adventurous film watcher that I am, you’re probably beyond excited to hunt this one down.

This new blu ray release also features new audio commentary with Kat Ellinger and Heather Drain, an appreciation of the movie by Nightmare USA author Stephen Thrower, a video essay by Alexandra Heller-Nicholas, the original theme song and trailer and reversible cover art of the original poster and artwork by The Twins of Evil.

You can get this from Arrow Video.

DISCLAIMER: We were sent this movie for review by Arrow Video. That has no impact on our thoughts.

When I was a kid, my parents went to a lot of religious bookstores for some reason. I was always left to my own devices and would always find my way to the Jack Chick comics and posters on the wall. In the pre-millennium tension world that was the late 1970’s, one movie was always getting shown and that was A Thief In the Night.

This movie is thought to have been seen by an estimated 300 million people and was the pioneer of a whole new genre of Christian film, one that would marry rock music and horror movies to create a film that would, quite frankly, scare you into believing. This isn’t family-friendly evangelic filmmaking. This is punch you in the face and demand you get saved now mania.

Patty Myer wakes up to learn that millions of people have disappeared in the Rapture. Even her family is gone and she’s been left behind. She’s trapped in a world where the United Nations has set up an emergency government system called the United Nations Imperium of Total Emergency (UNITE) and declare that those who do not receive a symbol of identification — yes, the Mark of the Beast — will be arrested.

It didn’t have to be this way for Patty. One of her friends loved Jesus and followed Him. Another friend was bitten by a snake before finding his way. And now, she doesn’t believe in Jesus or the UNITE preachings, so she’s on the run.

Patty is chased by UNITE to a bridge where she falls to her death, but then she awakens only for it to all be a dream. But guess what? The Rapture happens again and her family is all gone again. What happens next? Will she accept the Mark? Will she try to find her way to Heaven? If even a priest will take the Mark, how can a normal person avoid Satan?

There were three other movies in this series — of course we’ll be covering all of them — and they all build on the tension of the end of all things. These things played in libraries and churches and used fear to lead the conversion call at the end. I’ve never understood that, but the majority of humanity leaves me questioning a lot of things.

All I know is that I spent most of my childhood nights awake in bed worrying about the end of the world. Would I be ready? Would I make it to the Rapture? How would I survive when the rest of my family went to Heaven and I was left alone to battle the forces of the evil ones? I would get the shakes, waking my whole family up screaming in terror.

Did the movie work? According to an interview on a Baptist church website, Heather Hendershoot, associate professor in the media studies department at Queens College, City University of New York said, “I have found that A Thief in the Night is the only evangelical film that viewers cite directly and repeatedly as provoking a conversion experience.”

25 years later, the authors of the Left Behind series of books and films had the same success but on a much more secular level. We’ll never lose our fear of the end times until after they come…and according to scripture, we’ll never know exactly when we’ll all be taken or left behind.

You can watch this for free on Amazon Prime or Archive.org, as well as You Tube via the Christian Movies portal. There’s even an official website if you want to learn more.

In 1967, Martin Scorsese made his first movie, the black and white film I Call First, which was later retitled to Who’s That Knocking at My Door. Originally intended as the first of the director’s semiautobiographical J. R. Trilogy — along with Mean Streets — it was followed by this movie, an adaption of American anarchist Ben L. Reitman’s semi-autobiographical Sister of the Road. Made for Roger Corman, it taught Scorsese that movies could be made cheaply yet still entertain audiences while reinforcing his friend and mentor John Cassavetes’ belief that the auteur should make the movies that he wanted to make, instead of someone else’s projects.

Actually, Cassavetes was pretty blunt. After Scorsese showed him the finished product, the actor embraced him and said, “Marty, you’ve just spent a whole year of your life making a piece of shit. It’s a good picture, but you’re better than the people who make this kind of movie. Don’t get hooked into the exploitation market, just try and do something different.”

Boxcar Bertha Thompson (Barbara Hershey) and “Big” Bill Shelly (David Carradine) are train robbers and lovers embroiled in the plight of railroad workers as they try to unionize. Bertha is implicated in a murder and the two become fugitives.

Bernie Casey shows up as Von Morton and Carradine’s father John is also in this as H. Buckram Sartoris. Seeing as how it was a Corman picture, it wasn’t always intended to be an art project, as the producer wanted another Bloody Mama.

Hershey said that the movie was “a lot of fun even though it’s terribly crippled by Roger Corman and the violence and sex. But between the actors and Marty Scorsese the director, we had a lot of fun. We really had characters down but one tends to not see all that, because you end up seeing all the blood and sex.”

There was a rumor that Roger Corman’s wife Julie Corman had actually obtained the rights to the story from Bertha Thompson herself. The story goes that Corman had tracked her down to a hotel in San Francisco, but the woman wouldn’t let her in. It’s also a great lesson in carnie PR work, as the author explained that there wasn’t ever a real Bertha. In fact, she was a combination of at least three women he knew.

I have to wonder how the Cormans reacted when they finally saw this and all of the violence that was usually so exciting in the early 70’s new Hollywood pictures felt so doomed here.

You can watch this on Amazon Prime.

There’s nothing I hate more than seeing the Troma logo displayed before a movie they only have the rights to. It’s often enough to make me shut a film off, which I did with this one before heading back one more time to try and make it through.

Preacherman was shot entirely on location in Monroe, North Carolina and was produced by a Charlotte, NC production company, Preacherman Corp. Eleven of the seventeen actors in this movie were locals from the Carolinas and most of the crew was from there, too. Outside of star, writer, producer and director Amos Juxley (actually Brooklyn-born Albery T. Viola) and Iilene Kristen, who played Mary Lou and would go on to be on Ryan’s Hope and One Life to Live, not many of them ever acted again.

The Preacherman Amos Huxley loves to get money and make love to young ladies, which runs him afoul of the law in White Oak County. Soon, Amos has escaped yet another series of cops and begins living with the Crabtree family, who are farmers and therefore must have a farmer’s daughter, Mary Lou. He somehow convinces everyone that he’s going to return her virtue and also gets her to believe that the angel Leroy is coming to make her clean again.

The cops are in on the Crabtree’s main crop, which is moonshine, but the Preacherman convinces them to start a new church funded by that demon alcohol. Hijinks, as they say, ensue.

Bill Simpson, who played Sheriff Zero Bull also played Zero in Moonshine Mountain. He also reprised that role in the sequel. Yes, somehow there was a second movie in this series, entitled Preacherman Meets Widderwoman, which never received a national distribution and only played regionally in the South. Screenwriters Joseph Alvarez and W. Henry Smith also penned the hicksploitation-centric romps Trucker’s Woman and Redneck Miller.

You can watch this on Amazon Prime.

Jesus Christ is born again on Earth. Maybe. Then again, he could also be a biker tripping on acid with a hardcore Southern Baptist preacher daddy. But it doesn’t matter, because he’s got his gang of bikers and he’s taking them on an LSD-fueled pilgrimage to the Promised Land. Oh 1972 — what a magical time you were for completely off the rails movies.

The title doesn’t show up for fifteen minutes and the same guy that wrote and directed this — William F. McGaha — also stars in it. He did the same thing for two other movies, Bad Girls for the Boys and The Speed Lovers.

Somehow, he was able to convince Joana Moore (Touch of Evil), Slim Pickens (the guy rode a nuke into Russia for us, folks) and Burr DeBenning (five years before he’d chase a melting Steve West all over the city).

With a tagline like “J.C. And His Disciples Were A Gang Of Broads, Bikes And Blacks,” how can you really go wrong? Well, the actual film doesn’t live up to the premise, of a biker Jesus changing the world, but on this budget, they were lucky he changed his vestments.

The poster and taglines though? That’s what movies are all about.

Marsha Jordan (Count Yorga, The Toy Box) is Sweet Georgia, the sexed up wife of rancher Big T (Gene Drew, Truck Stop Women, Bobbie Jo and the Outlaw), an abusive drunk who she denies carnal pleasure, instead finding it in the arms of ranchhand Cal and even the arms of her stepdaughter Virginia (Barbara Mills, who also used the stage names Leona Tyler and Barbara Caron for movies like Executive Wives and Fire In Her Bed).

The final straw is when Georgia sleeps with the slow switted Leroy, which leads to her getting trampled by a horse and the farmhand getting stabbed with a pitchform before Cal and Virginia cattle prod the oyster ditch, so to speak. Then, of course, Cal is killed by Big T and we cut to Virginia enjoying herself in a room that is so red lit that it must have been in Mario Bava’s house. In case you think that the once virginal Virginia isn’t going to dance the forbidden polka with her old man, then you haven’t seen a Harry Novak film. Is there a square up reel? Of course there is.

This is another Harry Novak affair. Yes, the producer of such stalwart offerings as Suburban Pagans; Country Cuzzins; Wham! Bam! Thank You, Spaceman!; The Child and   Tanya, perhaps the only sexploitation comedy romp about Patty Hearst. If you think I’m not hunting down that last one right now, you don’t know me all that well.

Should you watch this? Honestly, other than the song that plays throughout the film, there’s not much I can recommend. You’d probaby get more out of it just looking at the poster for an hour.

Robert Mulligan is a strange choice to direct a horror movie. He was more well-known for dramas like Summer of ’42; Same Time, Next Year and To Kill A Mockinbird. This adaption of the Tom Tryon book was also scripted by the author, who was once an actor before suffering the abuse of Otto Preminger.

This is a movie that I’ve been wanting to see since reading about it in Paperbacks From Hell (writer Grady Hendrix — who created that book with Will Errickson — also wrote this great article all about Tryon), as Tryon is really the forgotten horror writer of the 1970’s.

In the summer of 1935, identical twins Holland and Niles Perry live on their family farm, but all is not well. Their father died in an accident in the apple cellar last year and their mother remains so sad that she rarely leaves her room. While the rest of the family goes about their daily lives, Niles grows closer to Ada (Uta Hagen, who may have only appeared in five films, but was an incredibly influential acting teacher and Broadway star), his Russian grandmother, who has introduced him to the great game, the Perry family’s secret gift of being able to project their mind into other beings.

The twins are pretty mischeivous, as they still play in the apple cellar where their father died. One day, they’re caught there by their cousin Rusell, who also sees that Niles is wearing the ring that was to be buried with his rather. Holland, the older of the two twins, says that the ring passes on to the oldest son, who can do whatever he wants with it. He wants his brother to have it.

Their father’s brother George locks up the cellar, but Holland knows how to sneak in. And to get revenge for Russell’s snitching, he hides a pitchfork inside a haystack. The young boy jumps into it and is killed to the horror of Niles, who must now keep his brother’s secret. This behavior only gets worse when Holland causes a neighbor (Portia Nelson, one of Tryon’s lifelong friends) to have a heart attack after he menaces her with a rat.

The twins’ mother finally learns what is happening and finds the ring inside a tobacco tin, along with a human finger. She demands that Niles tell her how he got it. He says that Holland gave it to him and the evil brother charhes his mother, knocking her down the stairs, rendering her paralyzed.

After the neighbor’s body is found, Ada finds Holland’s harmonica and asks Niles what happened. He lets her know that his brother has been evil all summer. Here’s where the twist comes in — Holland has been dead since he fell down a well on their birthday last March. Right before he died, Niles used the great game to talk to his dead brother, who commanded him to open his coffin, cut off his finger and take the ring.

The old woman now realizes that Niles has kept his brother alive in his mind and has been responsible for everything bad that has happened. Yet she is unable to turn on him and keeps his secret, as long as he never plays the game again.

The only problem is that Niles can’t be stopped. When his sister gives birth to a baby girl (look for a young John Ritter as their father) the Holland side of his personality steals the baby as he is fascinated by the Lindbergh kidnapping. The child is discovered drowned and a mentally challenged farmhand is arrested for the murder. But Ada knows better. She demands that Niles — alone in the apple cellar — screaming for Holland to tell him where the baby — who he loved — went. Ada pours kerosene into the cellar to kill the boy and throws herself into the fire.

Months later, we learn that Niles escaped, as Holland had cut the padlock to the door. With his beloved grandmother dead and his mother basically a vegetable, no one will ever know his secret. Niles is called down to lunch and life goes on.

This is how the theatrical cut ends, but the CBS 1970’s TV version, perhaps wanting the child to pay for his crimes, ends with Niles saying, “Holland, the game’s over. We can’t play the game anymore. But when the sheriff comes, I’ll ask him if we can play it in our new home.” The voiceover is dubbed by a different actor. However, every broadcast and release of the film cut out this voiceover in favor of the original theatrical ending.

Tryon hated this adaption, blaming everyone, incuding himself. “Oh, no. That broke my heart. Jesus. That was very sad,” he said of the finished film. “That picture was ruined in the cutting and the casting…God knows, it was badly cut and faultily directed. Perhaps the whole thing was the rotten screenplay, I don’t know.”

Despite a mild performance at the box office, the film ran on TV throughout the 1970’s. Roger Ebert was a major fan, saying that the film “has been criticized in some quarters because Mulligan made it too beautiful, they say, and too nostalgic. Not at all. His colors are rich and deep and dark, chocolatey browns and bloody reds; they aren’t beautiful but perverse and menacing. And the farm isn’t seen with a warm nostalgia, but with a remembrance that it is haunted.”

I looked for this film for nearly a year until Shudder played it last month, but it’s already gone from the service, back into the mists from whence it came.