Tag Archives: 1973

ARROW VIDEO 4K UHD AND BLU-RAY RELEASE: Soylent Green (1973)

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As we were rewatching this film last week, my wife said, “It always seems so hot in this movie; everyone is sweating all the time.” And I replied, “Yeah. We’re kind of living in it now.” Yep, other than turning people into food and my stairwells being filled with sleeping people, the world of Soylent Green feels like it’s getting closer every single day.

Was Charlton Heston the poster boy of the apocalypse? Between this, Planet of the Apes and The Omega Man, Chuck was in a ton of end-of-the-war films. This is based on Harry Harrison’s book Make Room, Make Room. Harrison’s writing may seem like slam-bang science fiction action, but at its heart, it hides plenty of satire and a marked disdain for violence and the military.

Heston plays NYPD detective Frank Thorn, who lives with his elderly police analyst, Solomon Roth, played by Edward G. Robinson in his final role. I can barely watch him in this movie without being moved to tears, as he died from bladder cancer 12 days after filming ended. Heston said, “He knew while we were shooting, though we did not, that he was terminally ill. He never missed an hour of work, nor was he late to a call. He never was less than the consummate professional he had been all his life. I’m still haunted, though, by the knowledge that the very last scene he played in the picture, which he knew was the last day’s acting he would ever do, was his death scene. I know why I was so overwhelmingly moved playing it with him.” That scene decimates me every single time I watch it, as Solomon realizes that his time, a time that remembers the past (he’s one of the few alive who can read from old books), is now gone. As he lies in state as part of the euthanasia process, Thorn tries in vain to stop him but is soon mesmerized by the footage of extinct animals and a once-green world.

Outside of Sol, everyone in this film is corrupt. Thorn and his fellow cops steal everything they can from the murder scenes that they investigate when they aren’t being riot cops, using bulldozers to lift people and throw them in the air. He even takes advantage of murder victim William R. Simonson’s (Joseph Cotten!) live-in lover, Shiri (some women in the future are allowed to be concubines and live in luxury; Thorn refers to her as furniture). And Chuck Connors shows up as Simonson’s bodyguard.

This film frightens me because so much of it is prophetic. The Twin Towers are gone in this future. The things that Sol says to Thorn, like “Ocean’s dying, plankton’s dying,” are happening as well. This movie is nearly fifty years old and predicts the greenhouse effect that so many people don’t want to see happening.

Director Richard Fleischer would go on to have a career of ups and downs. The son of animator Max Fleischer, he’d also direct Amityville 3-D, Red Sonja, Conan the Destroyer, Fantastic Voyage, Mandingo, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and the horrific Neal Diamond vehicle, The Jazz Singer. That’s probably the most all-over-the-place directorial credits ever.

The Arrow Video 4K UHD and Blu-Ray have a new 4K restoration from the original 35mm camera negative by Arrow Films and extras such as an archival commentary with director Richard Fleischer and star Leigh Taylor-Young; new audio commentary with film historian Michael Brooke and author Johnny Mains; archival interviews with Heston and Fleisher; a featurette on the world of the movie; MGM’s Tribute to Edward G. Robinson’s 101st Film, a vintage featurette; a trailer; image galleries; a reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Nathanael Marsh and a collectors’ booklet featuring new writing by Frank Collins and Alexandra Heller-Nicholas. You can get the 4K UHD and Blu-Ray from MVD.

TROMATIC SPECIAL EDITION BLU-RAY: Sugar Cookies (1973)

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The 1970s New York film scene was a magical, grimy sandbox. If you ever needed proof that the line between high art, avant-garde theater, and pure exploitation was completely non-existent back then, look no further than Theodore Gershuny’s Sugar Cookies (also known by the arguably sleazier title, Love Me My Way).

Just look at the credits on this thing! It’s a mind-melting collision of future Hollywood prestige, future exploitation royalty and Warhol superstars. It was co-written by Lloyd Kaufman, produced by Oliver Stone and stars Mary Woronov and Lynn Lowry.

The movie centers around Max Pavell (George Shannon), a pornographer and drug dealer. Max treats people like disposable tissues, a point proven when he psychologically warfares his attractive model girlfriend, Alta (Lynn Lowry), into committing suicide while his cameras are rolling. He figures it’s just another day in the office and a great way to sell some snuff-adjacent photos.

Enter Camilla (Mary Woronov), Alta’s deeply intense lesbian partner. Camilla isn’t going to let Max get away with it, but instead of just shooting him, she cooks up a complex, psychological revenge plot. She crosses paths with Julie (also played by Lynn Lowry), an aspiring actress who looks exactly like the late Alta.

Camilla takes Julie under her wing, molds her, trains her to mimic Alta’s every mannerism and unleashes this doppelgänger right into Max’s psychological blind spot. What follows is a bizarre, erotic and tense game of cat-and-mouse that feels like a Euro-sleaze thriller dropped directly into a trashy New York loft.

Lowry is an absolute goddess of 70s independent horror and cult cinema (The Crazies, Shivers). Here, she gets to flex her acting muscles playing two entirely different personalities. She brings that ethereal, slightly unhinged, yet deeply fragile vibe that only she can deliver. And of course, Woronov is the ultimate screen presence. Whether she’s dominating the screen for Andy Warhol, ruling Rock ‘n’ Roll High School or being hilarious in Eating Raoul, she commands attention. Her chemistry with Lowry is electric, cold and captivating.

Keep your eyes peeled for Warhol superstar Ondine as Roderick, legendary adult film icon Jennifer Welles as Max’s secretary and Monique van Vooren (Flesh for Frankenstein).

Director Theodore Gershuny (who was married to Woronov at the time) shoots this with a cold, stylistic eye that elevates it above its exploitation roots. It oscillates between an arthouse psychodrama and a total sleazefest, never quite settling on either, which is exactly why it works so well.

The Troma Blu-Ray release of this movie has extras including a classic introduction by Lloyd Kaufman; an archival Interviews with Lynn Lowery, Mary Woronov and Lloyd Kaufman; a trailer; Tromatic extras and coming distractions. You can get it from MVD.

WEIRD WEDNESDAY: Ricco the Mean Machine (1973)

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I get it. This movie isn’t a giallo. But what is it, really? It was sold under so many titles, from the more horror-centric Cauldron of Death (complete with a completely insane poster) to the more crime-oriented Gangland, the great Italian title Un Tipo Con una Faccia Strana ti Cerca per Ucciderti (A Guy With a Strange Face Is Looking for You to Kill You), The Dirty Mob, Mean Machine and even O Exolothreftis (The Terminator) in Greece.

It was written by Jose Gutierrez Maesso, who wrote Django and was an uncredited writer for the magical Pensione Paura. He’s joined by Santiago Moncada, who wrote A Bell from Hell, Hatchet for the Honeymoon and The Corruption of Chris Miller, along with Mario di Nardo (The Fifth Cord, Five Dolls for an August Moon). Directing all of this mayhem is Tulio Demichelli, who made the utterly insane Assignment Terror, as well as The Two Faces of Fear,  Espionage in Lisbon and the well-named There Is Someone Behind the Door.

Make no mistake — this is a movie awash with exploitation, gore, aberrant behavior and no real heroes. In short, it’s exactly the kind of movie you come to this site to read about.

Rico Aversi (Chris Mitchum) has just got out of jail, two years after Don Vito (Arthur Kennedy, the inspector from The Living Dead at Manchester Morgue) killed his father. Everyone wants Rico — notice that his name is spelled completely unlike the title of the movie — to kill the boss off, but Rico just wants to enjoy life outside of prison.

Malisa Longo (Cat in the Brain) plays his girlfriend — and who used to love Rico’s woman — and she enjoys sleeping with the hired help, which gets one unlucky member of the workstaff castrated in shocking detail. Then his John Thomas gets shoved into his mouth, and he’s dipped in acid and turned into soap. This movie is not interested in being unoffensive. Plus, you get Paola Senatore (Eaten Alive!) as Rico’s sister, whose death finally sets him on the path to revenge.

Robert Mitchum is one of my favorite actors ever, so it kind of pains me to admit this, but his son kind of slumbers through this leading role. But then again, everyone else in this movie is going to seem boring next to Barbara Bouchet, who pretty much sets the screen on fire, dances on the flames and sets it ablaze all over again in this movie. Anyone could show some leg to get the attention of some criminals. Bouchet goes all in, dancing nude on the roof of a car, covered in fog, giving her all no matter how grimy this scumfest gets. Without her, this movie would be passable. With her, it’s transcendent.

So yeah. It’s not a giallo. But man, if you’re coming in looking for bad behavior, gorgeous women and great clothes, it’s all covered.

WEIRD WEDNESDAY: Redneck (1973)

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When you pair the steely gaze of Franco Nero with the unhinged, lip-smacking energy of Telly Savalas, you expect a certain level of Euro-crime carnage. Redneck, known in its native Italy as Senza ragione, delivers that in spades, though it’s a strange, disjointed beast that feels like two different movies glued together by a madman who loves sleaze.

The premise is pure, high-octane 70s trash: Memphis (Savalas, channeling maximum camp) and his partner Mosquito (Nero) botch a jewelry store heist. While fleeing the scene, they carjack a vehicle, only to realize they’ve accidentally kidnapped Lennox Duncan, the 13-year-old son of a British consul. Naturally, this brat becomes their passport out of the country. He’s played by Mark Lester. Yes, the star of Oliver and the man who was a close, long-time friend of Michael Jackson. They were godfathers to each other’s children, and he has claimed to have donated sperm to Jackson, saying that Paris Jackson could be his daughter. Is that the strangest thing that happened in his life? Or would it be when a drunken Oliver Reed brought a prostitute for him for his 18th birthday?

But back to the movie, which is an unpredictable road film that shifts from a gritty crime thriller to a weirdly meditative, occasionally uncomfortable character study of an impressionable kid dragged into a world of violence.

The film starts strong with a frantic, albeit poorly planned, robbery and a classic Italian car chase. However, once the dust settles and the trio hits the road, the pacing hits a wall. Memphis descends into genuine, teeth-grinding insanity, while Mosquito, who is supposed to be the Lennie to Memphis’ George, somehow ends up being the surrogate father figure for young Lennox.

The movie’s middle act is where things get truly bizarre. There’s a strange, unsettling bond that forms between the kidnappers and the kid, culminating in a sequence where the boy watches Mosquito shave that has sparked decades of “Is he looking at the butt?” debate on the internet. It’s exactly the kind of sleazy, confusing Euro-cinema moment that makes me keep watching these movies. And yes, I may be straight, but when Franco Nero bares his ass, you look.

Savalas is clearly having the time of his life, but he leans so heavily into the camp that his incessant whistling and twitchy mannerisms threaten to swallow the entire movie whole. If you love him, he’s going to push you to hate him, between assaulting and murdering Maria (Ely Galleani), shooting a child, forcing Nero to wear her tiger stripe robe, murdering a dog and then killing an entire family of Germans by pushing their mobile home into a river.

By the way, the girl in that family is played by Lara Wendel, who would be chased by a dog and horribly murdered in Tenebre; she’s also in The Red Monks, Killing Birds, My Dear Killer, The Perfume of the Lady In Black, Ghosthouse, and You’ll Die at Midnight. In my world, that’s what we call a killer resume. Her father was Walter Barnes, a former football player who was a sheriff in High Plains Drifter, Bronco Billy and Smokey Bites the Dust, as well as one of the rangers in Day of the Animals. Her mother and brother also appear in this and are killed by Telly.

Why is Telly — a Greek-American born in Long Island — playing an American Southerner who speaks jive? Who thought having a teenage boy watch a naked Franco Nero and then examining his own naked body was a good idea? How many taboos is this movie ready to shoot in the face?

Maybe it was director Silvio Narizzano, who was born in Quebec and started his career in Toronto-based television before directing movies like Die! Die! My Darling!, Georgy Girl and the insane Carroll Baker and Denis Hopper-starring Bloodbath. Or perhaps it was writers Win Wells, who was also behind The Greek Tycoon, and Masolino D’Amico, a writer on Olivia Hussey’s Romeo and Juliet, as well as Caligula and the Cannon version of Otello.

Anyways, Lester’s father Michael, must have made some contacts in Italy, as he would go on to write and produce Antonio Margheriti’s Codename: Wild Geese.

What a weird movie.

You can watch this on YouTube.

Chattanooga Film Festival 2026 Red Eye #6: The Day of the Dolphin (1973)

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High-concept sci-fi. 70s paranoia. Talking dolphins. The Day of the Dolphin is a strange, earnest and a little bit flawed trip. Directed by Mike Nichols—fresh off The Graduate and Carnal Knowledge—this is a somber, weirdly tense thriller that takes its talking dolphins premise with a level of seriousness that borders on the bizarre.

Dr. Jake Terrell (George C. Scott) and his wife, Maggie (Trish Van Devere), are living the remote-island dream, spending their days at a secret facility teaching dolphins to speak English. They hit the jackpot with Alpha (“Fa“), a dolphin they’ve raised since birth, who finally manages to pipe out, “Pa love Fa.“

Everything is going swimmingly until the shady Franklin Foundation, led by the slippery Harold DeMilo (Fritz Weaver), decides that these intelligent marine mammals have a better use: acting as mobile, weaponized delivery systems for a presidential assassination.

After the dolphins are staked, a web of government conspiracies and undercover operatives (including a pre-Mob boss, Paul Sorvino) emerges. When the dolphins are trained to deliver a magnetic limpet mine to the President’s yacht, it’s up to the bond between the scientist and his aquatic subjects to turn the tide. It’s essentially a political thriller where the main stars spend half the runtime clicking at each other.

This movie was originally going to be directed by Roman Polanski. Following the tragic murder of his wife, Sharon Tate, at the hands of the Manson Family, he dropped the project. Mike Nichols called this the hardest shoot of his career. Filmed in the Bahamas, the production was plagued by delays, largely due to George C. Scott, who famously delayed the start of filming by claiming he had a virus for three days. Producer Joseph Levine later griped that he paid Scott $750,000, only to have the star go over budget and off schedule.

While it’s based on a novel by Robert Merle, the film — written by Buck Henry — leans heavily on the real-life work of Dr. John C. Lilly, a neuroscientist who spent the 60s actually trying to teach dolphins to communicate. His work was fascinating, controversial and definitely pushed the boundaries of science. Probably logic, while he was at it.

The Day of the Dolphin is definitely a relic of a time when major studios were willing to roll the dice on incredibly weird ideas. It’s slow, it’s melancholic, and it’s genuinely convinced that you care deeply about these dolphins’ emotional growth. 

You can watch this either in-person or virtually at the Chattanooga Film Festival. For more info, visit the official site.

JUNESPLOITATION: Sugar Cookies (1973)

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DAY 22. Revenge!

The 1970s New York film scene was a magical, grimy sandbox. If you ever needed proof that the line between high art, avant-garde theater, and pure exploitation was completely non-existent back then, look no further than Theodore Gershuny’s Sugar Cookies (also known by the arguably sleazier title, Love Me My Way).

Just look at the credits on this thing! It’s a mind-melting collision of future Hollywood prestige, future exploitation royalty and Warhol superstars. It was co-written by Lloyd Kaufman, produced by Oliver Stone and stars Mary Woronov and Lynn Lowry.

The movie centers around Max Pavell (George Shannon), a pornographer and drug dealer. Max treats people like disposable tissues, a point proven when he psychologically warfares his attractive model girlfriend, Alta (Lynn Lowry), into committing suicide while his cameras are rolling. He figures it’s just another day in the office and a great way to sell some snuff-adjacent photos.

Enter Camilla (Mary Woronov), Alta’s deeply intense lesbian partner. Camilla isn’t going to let Max get away with it, but instead of just shooting him, she cooks up a complex, psychological revenge plot. She crosses paths with Julie (also played by Lynn Lowry), an aspiring actress who looks exactly like the late Alta.

Camilla takes Julie under her wing, molds her, trains her to mimic Alta’s every mannerism and unleashes this doppelgänger right into Max’s psychological blind spot. What follows is a bizarre, erotic and tense game of cat-and-mouse that feels like a Euro-sleaze thriller dropped directly into a trashy New York loft.

Lowry is an absolute goddess of 70s independent horror and cult cinema (The Crazies, Shivers). Here, she gets to flex her acting muscles playing two entirely different personalities. She brings that ethereal, slightly unhinged, yet deeply fragile vibe that only she can deliver. And of course, Woronov is the ultimate screen presence. Whether she’s dominating the screen for Andy Warhol, ruling Rock ‘n’ Roll High School or being hilarious in Eating Raoul, she commands attention. Her chemistry with Lowry is electric, cold and captivating.

Keep your eyes peeled for Warhol superstar Ondine as Roderick, legendary adult film icon Jennifer Welles as Max’s secretary and Monique van Vooren (Flesh for Frankenstein).

Director Theodore Gershuny (who was married to Woronov at the time) shoots this with a cold, stylistic eye that elevates it above its exploitation roots. It oscillates between an arthouse psychodrama and a total sleazefest, never quite settling on either, which is exactly why it works so well.

Sizzlin’ Summer of Subterranean Psychotronica 2026: Poor Devil (1973)

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Week 1 (June 21 – 27) – Welcome to HELL

The summer’s here, so get ready to broil!

Sammy Davis Jr. was a fascinating, walking contradiction of a man. He was an absolute dynamo who could smoke four packs of cigarettes a day, draw and fire a Colt Single Action Army Revolver in a quarter of a second and effortlessly balance being a parody of himself while simultaneously parodying himself. But beneath the Mr. Show Business grin was a life of unbelievable grit and complexity.

Davis battled rampant racism his entire career, even from the wings of the stage where his own Rat Pack cohorts would casually toss racial slurs like “smokey” at him. In a searing interview with Roots author Alex Haley in Playboy, Sammy talked about the first time he truly collided with American racism: in the Army. He was brutally beaten just for looking at a white female commanding officer while she gave him orders. He woke up with his body covered in anti-Black graffiti and doused in turpentine. Yet that very night, and every night after, he was still expected to perform for the troops. That’s where Sammy learned he’d have to fight just to be respected. Once he broke into Hollywood, he stayed in by any means necessary, even if it meant putting on a grin that sometimes came off as insincere.

Despite his massive fame, he was never allowed full membership in the Hollywood elite. His romances with white actresses like Kim Novak rubbed the establishment the wrong way. And while he was a massive financial engine for the Civil Rights Movement, his relationship with the Black community was incredibly complex. He earned plenty of ire when he publicly hugged and supported Richard Nixon in 1972. But look at the context: Sammy was originally a Democrat who campaigned heavily for JFK in 1960 and RFK in 1968. Yet, John F. Kennedy notoriously revoked Sammy’s invitation to the presidential inauguration because he had married white actress May Britt. Nixon, on the other hand, invited Sammy to be the first Black guest to ever sleep at the White House. You can see why his allegiances shifted.

Once, Jack Benny asked Sammy about his handicap on the golf course. Sammy didn’t miss a beat: “Handicap? Talk about a handicap. I’m a one-eyed Negro Jew.”

That brings us to the 1970s, where Sammy fully embraced the free-swinging sex scene of the era. He reportedly learned how to deep throat from porn star Linda Lovelace herself and it’s widely believed he was first introduced to Anton LaVey’s Church of Satan during an orgy at his own star-studded nightclub, The Factory.

It makes a weird kind of sense. And it all perfectly aligned with a bizarre NBC television pilot Sammy starred in, one that actually led to him accepting an honorary second-degree membership in the Church of Satan.

Originally airing on February 14, 1973, Poor Devil stars Sammy Davis Jr. as, well, Sammy. He’s a low-level bumbling demon who has completely screwed up his job for the last thousand or so years. Now, he’s desperate to succeed and prove his worth to his big boss in Hell: Lucifer, played by the towering, majestic Christopher Lee. Honestly, if you don’t immediately go hunt this up on YouTube, just stop and appreciate the sheer madness of Dracula himself playing Satan opposite a Rat Pack icon.

To finally win over the dark lord, Sammy is given a seemingly simple task: he has to convince a miserable, downtrodden accountant named Burnett J. Emerson—played by the great Jack Klugman!—to sell his soul.

What does Klugman get in return? Oh, just total wealth for seven years and the chance to get sweet, petty revenge on his insufferable boss, who happens to be played by none other than Adam West! It’s a television fanatic’s dream. The catch, of course, is that after those seven years are up, Klugman is headed straight to Hell for eternity. As Sammy describes it, Hell is “a lot like Miami, only less humid.”

Sammy flirted with the Church of Satan heavily around the production of this flick. He painted one fingernail blood-red, wore a heavy Baphomet medallion and flashed the horns from time to time on stage before finally dropping out of the scene by the mid-1970s (right around the time Anton LaVey went into seclusion).

You really have to wonder where this show would have gone if NBC had picked it up as a weekly series. Would Sammy tempt a different guest-star celebrity every week? Would Klugman have stayed on as a regular? Would LaVey have made a cameo in the sweeps episode?

Instead, all we are left with is this 1973 pilot. It’s a wonderful artifact of early-70s network strangeness, completely devoid of a laugh track and dripping with overt occult imagery. It was a wild, lawless time to be alive, and it’s a era of television we will never truly see again. But hey, if the only thing that ultimately came out of this bizarre experiment was the infamous, real-life photo of Sammy Davis Jr. hanging out with Anton LaVey and future Temple of Set leader Michael Aquino, I’m calling Poor Devil an absolute, unholy success.

You can watch this on YouTube.

JUNESPLOITATION: Redneck (1973)

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DAY 18: Franco Nero!

When you pair the steely gaze of Franco Nero with the unhinged, lip-smacking energy of Telly Savalas, you expect a certain level of Euro-crime carnage. Redneck, known in its native Italy as Senza ragione, delivers that in spades, though it’s a strange, disjointed beast that feels like two different movies glued together by a madman who loves sleaze.

The premise is pure, high-octane 70s trash: Memphis (Savalas, channeling maximum camp) and his partner Mosquito (Nero) botch a jewelry store heist. While fleeing the scene, they carjack a vehicle, only to realize they’ve accidentally kidnapped Lennox Duncan, the 13-year-old son of a British consul. Naturally, this brat becomes their passport out of the country. He’s played by Mark Lester. Yes, the star of Oliver and the man who was a close, long-time friend of Michael Jackson. They were godfathers to each other’s children, and he has claimed to have donated sperm to Jackson, saying that Paris Jackson could be his daughter. Is that the strangest thing that happened in his life? Or would it be when a drunken Oliver Reed brought a prostitute for him for his 18th birthday?

But back to the movie, which is an unpredictable road film that shifts from a gritty crime thriller to a weirdly meditative, occasionally uncomfortable character study of an impressionable kid dragged into a world of violence.

The film starts strong with a frantic, albeit poorly planned, robbery and a classic Italian car chase. However, once the dust settles and the trio hits the road, the pacing hits a wall. Memphis descends into genuine, teeth-grinding insanity, while Mosquito, who is supposed to be the Lennie to Memphis’ George, somehow ends up being the surrogate father figure for young Lennox.

The movie’s middle act is where things get truly bizarre. There’s a strange, unsettling bond that forms between the kidnappers and the kid, culminating in a sequence where the boy watches Mosquito shave that has sparked decades of “Is he looking at the butt?” debate on the internet. It’s exactly the kind of sleazy, confusing Euro-cinema moment that makes me keep watching these movies. And yes, I may be straight, but when Franco Nero bares his ass, you look.

Savalas is clearly having the time of his life, but he leans so heavily into the camp that his incessant whistling and twitchy mannerisms threaten to swallow the entire movie whole. If you love him, he’s going to push you to hate him, between assaulting and murdering Maria (Ely Galleani), shooting a child, forcing Nero to wear her tiger stripe robe, murdering a dog and then killing an entire family of Germans by pushing their mobile home into a river.

By the way, the girl in that family is played by Lara Wendel, who would be chased by a dog and horribly murdered in Tenebre; she’s also in The Red Monks, Killing Birds, My Dear Killer, The Perfume of the Lady In Black, Ghosthouse, and You’ll Die at Midnight. In my world, that’s what we call a killer resume. Her father was Walter Barnes, a former football player who was a sheriff in High Plains Drifter, Bronco Billy and Smokey Bites the Dust, as well as one of the rangers in Day of the Animals. Her mother and brother also appear in this and are killed by Telly.

Why is Telly — a Greek-American born in Long Island — playing an American Southerner who speaks jive? Who thought having a teenage boy watch a naked Franco Nero and then examining his own naked body was a good idea? How many taboos is this movie ready to shoot in the face?

Maybe it was director Silvio Narizzano, who was born in Quebec and started his career in Toronto-based television before directing movies like Die! Die! My Darling!, Georgy Girl and the insane Carroll Baker and Denis Hopper-starring Bloodbath. Or perhaps it was writers Win Wells, who was also behind The Greek Tycoon, and Masolino D’Amico, a writer on Olivia Hussey’s Romeo and Juliet, as well as Caligula and the Cannon version of Otello.

Anyways, Lester’s father Michael, must have made some contacts in Italy, as he would go on to write and produce Antonio Margheriti’s Codename: Wild Geese.

What a weird movie.

You can watch this on YouTube.

WEIRD WEDNESDAY: Preacherman Meets Widderwoman (1973)

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After the original film, Preacherman raked in a cool $5 million. Albert T. Viola brought back the character of Amos Huxley, a backwoods con man posing as a man of the cloth, to stir up more trouble. In this installment, our hero finds his match in five-time widow Alzena Suggs (Marian Brown). It’s classic grindhouse structure: take a guy who thinks he’s the smartest person in the room, throw him into a situation where he’s totally out of his depth and watch the sparks fly. 

So yeah, this starts right where the last one ends, asuxley (Viola), fresh off a motel getaway with the mysterious lady in red, runs from the police. Soon, he falls for the widderwoman of the title, a woman who has married and buried five. She’s rich, attractive and has a hot daughter, Willie Mae (Jeramie Rain), who steals watermelons for a living. Don’t tell Vince Majestyk.

Unlike the original, this one was based on two plays by Chet McIntyre: Poor Rudolph and Feather and the Bell. You have to wonder—were there really stage plays dedicated to the Preacherman back then, or did they just shoehorn him into these plots? 

While the original got a second wind thanks to Troma’s 1983 theatrical re-release, Widderwoman got stuck with a PG rating and seemed to vanish outside the Southern drive-in circuit. It is, without a doubt, the most North Carolinian movie you’ll find, a regional curio packed with hillbilly caricatures and humor that only a drive-in crowd could love. And by that, I mean me.

Viola plays Amos Huxley with a level of demented conviction so true that you’d swear this guy was a real snake-oil salesman, not a Brooklyn-born playwright. He even goes so far as to decline an onscreen credit, billing the role as “Amos Huxley…as himself.” Despite this being a vanity production, he’s actually pretty generous with screen time. Jeramie Rain is a standout as the no-nonsense Willie Mae—a role that fits right in alongside her turn as Sadie in Last House on the Left. Interestingly, she used the pseudonym “Sue Davis” here, which is a bit of a mystery since she used her real name in films she reportedly loathed.

And then there’s the mystery of Rebecca Payson (who plays Armanda). Some think that she’s actually Deborah Loomis, who was in Blood Bath and Hercules in New York. The scandal sheets tried to track Loomis down when Arnold Schwarzenegger became governor, hoping for dirt, but she was untraceable. If the New York Post couldn’t find her, what chance do I have? 

Viola would go on to write one more movie, The Night They Robbed Big Bertha’s. 

You can watch this on YouTube.

RADIANCE BLU-RAY RELEASE: Through and Through (1973)

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Grzegorz Królikiewicz’s Through and Through (or Na wylot, if you want to be authentic) makes your standard crime thriller look like a Saturday morning cartoon. We’re in 1930s Kraków, and the world is gray, hungry and cruel. Jan (Franciszek Trzeciak) is an architect who can’t catch a break, and Maria (Anna Nieborowska) is his partner in this bleak, suffocating dance. They are the definition of the forgotten—poverty-stricken, constantly humiliated by a society that has no room for them and pushed to the absolute edge.

When you’re pushed that far, the line between moral and necessary” just evaporates. Desperation takes the wheel, and they commit a crime that’s less about malice and more about a cry for existence. But don’t go in expecting a straightforward police procedural; this is a descent, plain and simple.

Królikiewicz doesn’t shoot scenes like a normal director; he fragments them. He uses claustrophobic, intense close-ups that feel like they’re invading your personal space, and the sound design is pure, unnerving dissonance. It sounds like a headache, but it’s actually a masterpiece of tension.

When this hit Cannes back in the day, people were throwing around names like Dostoevsky. It’s a deep dive into the psychology of the downtrodden, stripped of all glamour and served cold.

Through and Through is a heavy, challenging, and essential piece of Polish cinema that refuses to be ignored. It’s not a fun Friday night flick—it’s an experience. If you’re into films that challenge your perception of how a story can be told or if you just want to see how high-art misery can be transformed into pure, uncompromising cinema, get your hands on this.

The Radiance Blu-Ray release has a new 2K restoration supervised by cinematographer Bogdan Dziworski, a new interview with critic Michał Oleszczyk and three short films by Królikiewicz. It comes in a reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Time Tomorrow, with a limited-edition booklet featuring new writing by critic Ela Bittencourt. As always with Radiance, this limited edition of 3000 copies is presented in full-height Scanavo packaging with a removable OBI strip, leaving the packaging free of certificates and markings. You can order it from MVD.