I mean, if you made a movie just for me, this would be it.
This had to be sent to the Italian censorship board twice, as they said that the film “consists of a rambling series of sadistic sequences, meant to urge, through extreme cruelty mixed with degenerate eroticism, the lowest sexual instincts.”
Also called Riti, magie nere e segrete orge nel Trecento…(Rites, Black Magic and Secret Orgies in the Fourteenth Century…) and The Reincarnation of Isabel, this was written and directed by Renato Polselli, who also made Delirio Caldo, The Vampire and the Ballerina and Revelations of a Psychiatrist on the World of Sexual Perversion.
Hundreds of years ago, Isabella (Rita Calderoni, Nude for Satan) was tortured and burned for being a witch as her lover swore revenge. Then we meet Jack Nelson (Mickey Hargitay, making some wild movies as always) and his stepdaughter Laureen (also Calderoni) who are celebrating her engagement in a castle without knowing that the cellar is host to the black magic rites of the title. And if they get seven sets of eyes and the blood of virgins, they can bring back Isabella.
Any time this movie feels like it’s getting boring or starting to make sense, it cuts to either sex scenes or murder or Satanic rituals and you know, more movies could learn from what it was all about. I can only imagine the kind of parties that Polselli used to host.
There are also vampires, because this movie is also known as The Ghastly Orgies of Count Dracula.
You know, I never dated many girls who wore makeup before my wife. But there was one that was taking her time putting on makeup and she was putting on false eyelashes and I was trying to say that she didn’t need all that makeup and lashes and she said, “I’m doing it for me. And you. So let me get hot for you.” I wish I had seen this movie before I dated her, because man, the fake eyelashes in this are doing something to me.
Revelations of a Psychiatrist on the World of Sexual Perversion is a mondo film that draws from real newspaper headlines to show the sexual sick truth, as I’m certain an American trailer would say if this movie had ever emerged from its native Italy. Directed and written by Renato Polselli, it has a psychiatrist named Dr. Froodman explaining the deviancy that he has seen to a group of his students.
If this was shocking in 1973, when it first came out, it would be even more shocking in 1979. In fact, some of the adult scenes would still feel taboo in 2023, as two men touching one another, even with a female third present, doesn’t often appear in mainstream adult.
There are all manner of perversions here — and if you get what they are just by the name like me, well, you have some issues — including zooerastia, nymphomania, necrophilia, fetishes and gerontophilia. Even one of the students gets involved, as she explains why she fell for an older adult man while just a child; his abuse of her is just one reason why this happened. And the doctor is not above sharing the story of his servant who lost his virginity at the late age of 44 to someone of the third sex, as they say in these mondo films.
A lot of the inserts were either staged with a totally different cast or taken directly from American loops. You have to love the Italian exploitation industry, as they have no fear when it comes to being outright thieves. Polselli used his Ralph Brown name for this; the cast has a few notable people in it, including Isarco Ravaioli as the professor (he’s also in The Throne of Fire, Polselli’s Mania and Oscenità, Satanik, Danger: Diabolik and a few Sartana and Django Clones); Franca Gonella (Diabolicamente… Letizia and Luigi Rosso’s Beauty and the Beast); Bruna Beani (the priestess in The Eerie Midnight Horror Show, Byleth: The Demon of Incest) and Melissa Chimenti, who was Papaya in Joe D’Amato’s Papaya: Love Goddess of the Cannibals. As most of those movies are filled with either sex, violence or sex and violence, you should know what you’re getting into here.
At once a movie that has a girl explain her sexual desire for dogs and then shag a stuffed animal while also being a film that closes with the line “We are all spent beings desperately trying to walk towards infinity,” this barrage of rapid cuts and filth is pretty much Polselli from here on out.
This movie is under seventy minutes and is packed with so many things that it feels like going to one of those conveyer belt sushi places and being overwhelmed by all the things you want to eat and then trying to remember all of the ingredients.
Lawrence Orlovsky (Allan Berendt) and his wife Regina Dracula (Hope Stansbury), along with their staff of Carrie (Patti Gaul) , Orlando (Michael Fischetti) and Carlotta (Pichulina Hempi) have moved into a mansion sight unseen, but these things are necessary as Regina has a blood condition that demands constant injections. Also: Lawrence is growing a monstrous plant in his lab.
There are also human monsters as well, like lawyer Carl Root (John Wallowitch), who is stealing the money from the Orlovsky estate. That’s when we learn that Lawrence is really Larry Talbot and yes, you’d have to watch some monster movies to realize he’s a wolfman. Then there’s Jimmy (David Bevans), back in town to romance his sister Carrie. I mean, he’s there for about five minutes before Regina kills him with a meat cleaver to the head and dissolves him in acid.
For some other reason, Lawrence and Root’s secretary Prudence Towers (Pamela Adams) have an affair that only can happen in a cemetery guarded by Petra (Eve Crosby), who decides to blackmail the family and is also destroyed by Regina. And then, as one imagines, werewolf and vampire must battle within the burning home as we crawl to the credits.
This is a movie that mentions time more than once. The leg-free Orlando says that “Time is a dictator. You must follow him or you’ll be left behind.” while Jimmy, in the middle of necking with his sister, is more optimistic, as he opines, “As one grows older, time becomes a pussycat.”
At one point, Regina tells her husband, “Oh, go to hell.” He replies, “We’re there already.” Even in a world of werewolves, vampires, legs being operated on with steak knives, plants that eat people and long bloodlines of monsters, the greatest monsters are marriage and family.
This played double features with Gerard Damiano’s Legacy Of Satan and man, I can’t even imagine what audiences were like after sitting through both of these movies.
Molly Wheatland (Geraldine Page) left her husband and found the bottle. But at least she has somewhere to live, a place that was cheap because everyone thinks that Jamie Dillman (John McMurtry) was shot by the police there when his criminal career ended. He’s been in the attic ever since, but Molly doesn’t care. She kind of likes having him around.
Directed by Edward M. Abroms (who directed tons of TV and also edited Street Fighter, Cherry 2000 and You’ll Like My Mother) and written by Rod Serling based on the story “Housebound” by R. Chetwynd-Hayes, “Something In the Woodwork” has Molly push and push Dilman to kill her ex-husband Charlie (Leif Erickson) until she goes too far and gets what she wants.
Geraldine Page was in three Night Gallery episodes (along with this one, she’s in two episodes in Season 2, “Stop Killing Me” and “The Sins of the Fathers”) and she really makes this one of the best stories of season 3. Abroms mostly worked as an editor — he edited the pilot — but he really shows some great work here, particularly some handheld shots that look quite good.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Poor Devil was on the CBS Late Movie on August 8, 1977.
Sammy Davis Jr. battled racism throughout his career, even from the wings of the stage as his Rat Pack cohorts would call him racist names like smokey.
In an interview with Roots author Arthur Haley in Playboy, the entertainer talked about the first time he came up against his race: in the Army. He was beaten for looking at a white female commanding officer while she was giving him orders, with his body covered with anti-black graffiti and covered in turpentine. That night, as in every night he served, he was still asked to perform for the troops. That’s when Davis learned he’d have to fight to be respected. And once he was in, he’d stay in by any means necessary — even coming off as insincere.
Despite being a member of the Hollywood crowd, Davis still could never be a full member. His romance with white girls like Kim Novak rubbed people the wrong way. And even though he was a large financial supporter of the Civil Rights Movement, he still had a complex relationship with the black community.
For example, he earned plenty of ire when he supported Nixon in 1972. Although he was originally a Democrat and supported JFK in 1960 and RFK in 1968, John F. Kennedy would go on to revoke an inauguration invitation to “Mr. Show Business” because he married white actress May Britt. So maybe his conversion makes sense because Nixon invited him to be the first black guest at the White House.
Once, Jack Benny asked Sammy about his handicap on the golf course. He answered, “Handicap? Talk about a handicap. I’m a one-eyed Negro Jew.”
That said — it’s also believed that Davis was introduced to Anton LaVey’s Church of Satan at an orgy at the nightclub that he owned, The Factory. This also makes sense. There are plenty of stories about how Sammy loved the free-swinging sex scene of the 70s, even learning how to deep throat from the woman who introduced it to the zeitgeist, porn star Linda Lovelace.
Anyways — I could go on about Sammy Davis Jr. He was a fascinating man — 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 was able to both be a parody of himself and parody himself seemingly at the same time. But today, we’re here to discuss a strange TV pilot that Davis was in, one that would lead to him accepting an honorary second-degree membership in the Church of Satan.
Originally airing on February 14, 1973, on NBC, Sammy would star as Sammy in this series pilot. He’s a demon who has screwed up for the last thousand or so years and now wants to succeed and prove himself to his boss Lucifer, who is played by Christopher Lee. If you don’t immediately stop reading this and go watch this show, allow me to share this photo of Sir Christopher Frank Carandini Lee CBE, CStJ, with a gorgeous head of hair.
To win over his boss, Sammy has to convince Burnett J. Emerson (Jack Klugman!) to sell his soul. In return, he’ll get revenge on his boss (Adam West!) and gain wealth for seven years (and then go to Hell for eternity, which is a lot like Miami, only less humid).
Davis would flirt with The Church of Satan for some time, painting one fingernail red, wearing the Baphomet medallion and flashing the horns from time to time before dropping out by the mid-1970s (around the time that Anton LaVey went into seclusion).
One wonders where this show would have gone if it had become a weekly series. Would the Devil tempt a new celebrity every week? Would Klugman stick around? Would LaVey make a cameo?
All we have is this pilot, which is filled with Satanic imagery, a lack of a laugh track and plenty of early 1970s strangeness. What a weird time to be alive, one that we’ll never truly comprehend today. Still, if all that came of this was this photo of Davis with LaVey and future Temple of Set leader Michael Aquino, I’ll consider it a success.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Dark Places was on the CBS Late Movie on December 18, 1985.
Edward Foster (Robert Hardy) has inherited a mansion rumored to be haunted. Instead of being scared off, he decides to renovate it. What he doesn’t know is that the doctor of the previous owner, Andrew Carr, Dr. Ian Mandeville (Christopher Lee) and his sister Sarah (Joan Collins), as well as Prescott (Herbert Lom), the solicitor, know that there are two suitcases of money hidden somewhere.
They didn’t count on Edward being violently deranged, as he can see the past of the house, as he looks precisely like Carr and experiences the last days of that man’s life, in which he plans to leave his wife Victoria (Jean Marsh) for a governess named Alta (Jane Birkin). This house seems to lead to mental illness, as Victoria is impossible to be around. She knows Andrew is leaving, so she has her two children kill her rival while she’s seducing her husband. When he finds out, he strangles her and kills the little ones with a sword, bricking up all of the dead bodies — and the money — inside the house.
These flashbacks lead to him ridding his home of the others, just in time for the police to show up. Poor Joan Collins, yet another movie where she gets strangled! For her part, she said in her autobiography Past Imperfect, “I became known by the British press as Queen of the Horror Films — a title I didn’t particularly relish. But I was resilient. A survivor. I was lucky to be working so much after such a long period away from the British screen, particularly since I was well into my thirties.”
Dark Places was directed by Don Sharp, who also made The Creeping Flesh and written by Ed Brennan and Joseph Van Winkle. This was shot in an old asylum, which, while run down, made it the perfect location.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Santee was on the CBS Late Movie on October 16, 1975 and January 5, 1977.
Here’s some trivia you can use on your friends. Santee was one of the first motion pictures to be shot electronically on videotape, a groundbreaking technique at the time. This was achieved using Norelco PCP-70 portable NTSC cameras and portable Ampex VR-3000 2″ VTRs, marking a significant shift in film production technology.
Director Gary Nelson mainly worked in TV before this, but he has some interesting films to his credit, like the original Freaky Friday, The Black Hole and the Mike Hammer TV movies.
Jody’s long-awaited reunion with his father takes a dramatic turn when he discovers that his father is an outlaw on the run from a relentless bounty hunter named Santee (Glenn Ford). The story takes an unexpected twist when the two adversaries, Jody and Santee, find themselves forming an unlikely bond, realizing that they share a deeper connection than they could have ever imagined.
Santee boasts a diverse and intriguing cast, including Dana Wynter (Invasion of the Body Snatchers), Jay Silverheels (Tonto himself, who for some reason has been showing up in nearly every movie I’ve watched lately), Robert Donner (who also is in Nelson’s Allan Quatermain and the Lost City of Gold), Dark Brothers repertory actor Jack Baker, X Brands (the oddly named actor who may have been of German descent and from Kansas City, but always played Native Americans), Chuck Courtney (who played Daniel Reid Jr. on The Lone Ranger, the character who would grow up to be the father of The Green Hornet) and Lindsay Crosby (Bigfoot).
Edward Platt, the Chief on Get Smart, produced this film and played a crucial role in financing it. Platt raised the money to buy the video cameras, a significant contribution to the film’s production. One can only assume that his involvement also led to Nelson’s directorial role in the TV movie Get Smart, Again.
EDITOR’S NOTE: The Clones was on the CBS Late Movie on November 7, 1975, and April 18, 1977.
Dr. Gerald Appleby (Michael Greene) finds himself in a perplexing situation. He believes he’s been cloned. His conviction stems from a near-fatal escape from his lab’s explosion and the unsettling reports of his sightings in places he’s never been. This sets the stage for a gripping narrative as he goes on the run, pursued not only by the deranged scientist Carl Swafford (Stanley Adams, Cyrano Jones from the original Star Trek) but also by the ruthless thugs Sawyer (Otis Young, Blood Beach) and Nemo (Gregory Sierra, a stark contrast to his usual role as the virtuous Det. Sgt. Chano Amenguale on Barney Miller).
Directed by Paul Hunt (he also directed Twisted Nightmare and produced Demon Wind) and Lamar Card (who directed Supervan and Jukebox AKA Disco Fever, as well as the producer of Nashville Girl, Savage Harvestand Project: Metalbeast), who co-wrote the film with Steve Fisher, who started writing movies back in 1938 with Nurse from Brooklyn. He also wrote the novel and screenplay for I Wake Up Screaming, Hell’s Half Acre, Johnny Angel and episodes of Peter Gunn, McMillan & Wife, Cannon and Fantasy Island.
Most people will watch this movie and see a slow-moving film that goes nowhere, filled with fish-eye lens-addled drug scenes and an overwhelming sense of conspiracy doom. As for me, I read that sentence and only see the positives. Young and Sierra are having a blast; the ending is as cynical as it gets, and a lot of the ending takes place inside an amusement park that runs itself. It’s a movie that came out on VHS, has had no major DVD release and has never come out on Blu-ray.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Satan’s School for Girls was on the CBS Late Movie on September 5, 1975 and April 1, 1977.
The early 70s were a time when Satan seemed to reign. I first learned about Anton LaVey and the Church of Satan as a child by reading the TV Guide Book of Lists. They asked him what the most Satanic TV shows were, and he replied with a list that included so many of my favorite shows. It scared me as a twelve-year-old — could I be taken by devil worshippers and be made to celebrate the Black Mass? This cultural phenomenon of the 70s is a nostalgic left-hand trip for many of us.
Made-for-TV movies reflected the Satanic bent of the early 70s. This Aaron Spelling produced, David Lowell Rich (Eye of the Cat,Airport 79 – The Concorde) directed affair brings the devil to the boarding school, along with plenty of attractive girls ready to give their souls to the Son of the Morning Star.
Martha Sayers is running from a mysterious stranger who may or may not be related to Torgo from Manos: The Hands of Fate. She locks herself in her sister Elizabeth’s (Pamela Franklin, Necromancy,The Legend of Hell House, The Food of the Gods) house and hangs herself. Of course, the police just think it’s a suicide. But we know better — The Salem Academy for Women had to have something to do with it. Martha’s roommate warns Elizabeth to stay away, but she is determined to uncover the truth.
She takes the name of Elizabeth Morgan and enrolls at the school where she’s welcomed by Roberta (Kate Jackson!), Jody Keller (Cheryl Ladd!) and Debbie Jones (Jamie Smith-Jackson from Go Ask Alice, who is married to Michael Ontkean, Sheriff Harry S. Truman from Twin Peaks). The fact that Alice and two of Charlie’s Angels (Sabrina Duncan and Kris Munroe, I’ll have you know) playing devils in a movie thrills me to no end. And throw in Alice, and we have a movie!
Debbie keeps having outbursts in class, and another girl commits suicide, prompting Headmistress Williams to start worrying about the influence of the new girl. Then there’s that painting of Martha in a dungeon that Debbie painted but is now terrified of. Just imagine — Elizabeth snoops and finds that room on campus but is chased away by a man with a knife!
Roberta is now on Elizabeth’s side. After all, there are some crazy teachers, like the professor, who make them run a rat through a maze. And when Debbie tries to leave, her body shows up. Finally, Liz can’t take anymore and bursts into Professor Delacroix’s (Lloyd Bochner, who played Walter Thornton in The Lonely Lady) office. He screams that something is stalking him, so he jumps out a window, gun in hand. He runs through a swamp before being beaten to death with sticks by several students. The popular Dr. Joseph Clampett (Roy Thinnes, David Vincent from The Invaders, The Norliss Tapes) is the real killer. The plot takes unexpected turns, keeping the audience on the edge of their seats.
He’s leading a Satanic cult that believes that he’s the devil. Only Elizabeth and the headmistress survive as the rest of the girls sacrifice themselves to the flames. And Clampett? He survives the fire and then promptly walks outside and disappears.
Interesting Wiki story: In the film’s synopsis, whoever wrote it states, “the other girls stay behind to sacrifice themselves to their leader (But are saved by God and Jesus offscreen as they were forced).” How do they know? That certainly didn’t happen in the movie version I saw!
This was remade in 2000, with Kate Jackson playing the school’s dean and Shannen Doherty. That version is unreviewed. Why pick 2000 when you can choose 1973? If only all schools could be as ridiculous as the Salem Academy for Women! If only all rooms had shag carpeting, and there were constant wine mixers and murders and 70s garish fashions! My world is so dull by comparison!
EDITOR’S NOTE: The Norliss Tapes was on the CBS Late Movie on January 23 and May 26, 1975.
Occult investigator Norliss has disappeared, but his legacy lives on in a series of tapes that unfold the gripping narratives of his many escapades, such as his encounter with a widow and her undead artist husband. Originally developed as a series pilot by NBC, it was eventually broadcast as a TV movie on February 21, 1973.
Sanford Evans, our guide into the mysterious world of David Norliss (Roy Thinnes, Airport 1975, TV’s The Invaders), listens to the tapes that explain Norliss’s sudden disappearance.
A recent case concerned Ellen Cort (Angie Dickinson of TV’s Police Woman), whose husband has come back from the dead. It turns out that before his death from a mysterious disease, he had become involved with Mademoiselle Jeckiel (Vonetta McGee, Blacula), who gave him a scarab that he was buried with. Sheriff Tom Hartley (Claude Atkins!) doesn’t believe any of this, even when James keeps draining the blood of young women and a gallery owner who tries to break into his coffin and take his ring.
Bullets won’t stop the undead man, who’s also created a sculpture made of human blood that will bring the Egyptian deity Sargoth into our world. Our hero, Norliss, is kind of ineffectual, as the undead artist kills Jeckiel, killing Ellen’s sister and raising the demon. He finally stops the monster by setting the studio on fire with everyone inside, the dictionary definition of a pyrrhic victory.
That’s when Evans finishes the tape and wonders if this is Norliss’ last adventure. Nope. There’s another tape, even if the series never happened. That didn’t stop this TV movie from being aired in syndication and on the CBS Late Movie.
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