We often refer to movies as “Brownriggian” when we watch films on Saturday nights all night with the Drive-In Asylum Double Feature on Facebook Live. There’s no better example of what this word means than S. F. Brownrigg’s 1973 shocker Don’t Look in the Basement AKA The Forgotten AKA Death Ward #13.
Dr. Stephens, the main doctor at Stephens Sanitarium has a theory that patients should be able to freely act out their insanities in the hopes that someday they will snap back to reality. You know, if I’ve learned one thing about asylum doctors from, well, Asylum and Alone in the Dark, it’s that they’re all just as insane as their charges.
Before one of the older nurses can retire, we have the Judge (Gene Ross) chopping the doctor with an axe and Harriet (Camilla Carr) smashing the nurse’s head inside a suitcase. So when Charlotte Beale (Rosie Holotik, the cover girl of the April 1972 Playboy, as well as appearances in Horror High and the ghostly hitchhiker in Encounter with the Unknown) shows up for a new job and things seem weird. Or Brownriggian. In short, everything feels off. Hallways and stairwells seem like passageways to other dimensions and sweaty horror lurks sleeping like some kind of Southern gothic force of dread and menace.
This is a place filled with human children, killer women obsessed with sex, an elderly woman who thinks that flowers are her kids, a military man who lost his platoon in Vietnam and more. Even the sane are driven mad just by being in their presence.
There are plenty of people who decry Brownrigg’s movies, but I’m certainly not one of them. They invite you to worlds that are not our own and seem to come from a dimension far from here. For that and the vacation to the psychotronic that they offer, we should celebrate them.
For an added treat, check out JH Rood’s journey to the set locations, which you can download from the Internet Archive.
A Carolinas regional wonder by one-time director Jim Cinque, this is what happens when our blonde heroine — is her name Bev or Beth, because the audio in this is as bad as you want it to be — takes a few karate classes and puts on a black wig to avenge her sister, killed by her pimp Mr. Demmins.
So she’s kind of like a cat woman, but the movie doesn’t go so far as to challenge copyrights. Instead, she mostly battles a larger gentleman by the name of Doug. Now, the pimp supposedly has a fear of cats, but this never comes up after its mentioned once, which is very unlike Batman’s origin where a bat crashes through a rich man with PTSD’s window and he says, “You know, instead of trying to get to the root cause of crime, like systemic poverty, I’m just going to dress up in black and beat up street punks.”
I kind of love that they said that this movie had a $100,000 budget, which is around $600,000 in today’s money. Did all of that money go to hire Nick Dennis, who somehow went from Spartacus, East of Eden and A Streetcar Named Desire to being in films like this?
Let me tell you how weird this movie is. We never see our heroine dress up in her costume. She shows up in it after a few scenes and we are just to assume that it is her. This movie doesn’t have plot holes in that it just asks you to write your own story so that it all makes more sense.
If you ever want to get depressed, realize that sometimes your heroes need to get day jobs. For example, Orson Welles may have made the best movie ever first time up to bat, but he still had to appear in exploitation-level films, pseudo-science docs and play a Transformer in his last role.
Rod Serling is another hero who found himself lending his famous voice* to these films with movies like Encounter with the Unknown, The Legendary Curse of the Hope Diamond and this.
An edited version of Harold Reinl’s Erinnerungen an die Zukunft (Chariots of the Gods**), this movie lines up people like Wernher von Braun and Carl Sagan to discuss the theory that maybe we weren’t descended from apes.
It was also a pilot for the TV series In Search Of (so are two other one-hour specials*** made by producer Alan Landsburg, who made a series of books and fifty TV movies before retiring to breed and race horses). Sadly, Serling died before the syndicated series got picked up and Leonard Nimoy took the role.
If you saw the American version of Chariots of the Gods, you won’t get much else other than way better narration. Come to think of it, that’s a great reason to watch this.
*That’s also him saying, “Swan. He has no other name. His past is a mystery, but his work is already a legend. He wrote and produced his first gold record at 14. Since then, he’s won so many that he tried to deposit them in Fort Knox. He brought the blues to Britain. He brought Liverpool to America. He brought folk and rock together. His band, the Juicy Fruits single-handedly gave birth to the nostalgia wave in the 60′ s. Now he’s looking for the new sound of the spheres to inaugurate his own Xanadu, his own Disneyland the Paradise, the ultimate rock palace. This film is the story of that search, of that sound of the man who made it, the girl who sang it and the monster who stole it.” before Phantom of the Paradise.
**That will be on the site this week as well.
***The other ones are In Search of Ancient Mysteries and The Outer Space Connection.
Also known as The Legend of Blood Castle, The Female Butcher, The Bloody Countess and Ceremonia Sangrienta, this Jorge Grau-directed (The Living Dead at Manchester Morgue) Eurohorror film is a real classic that’s finally getting a great release thanks to Mondo Macabro.
The people of 19th century Europe aren’t ready to let go of their fear of vampires just yet, so they head out into the night and conduct trials over the graves over those who have recently died and are rumored to the undead.
As for Countess Erzebeth Bathory (Lucia Bosè, Fellini’s Satyricon), all she cares about is her quickly fading beauty and her husband’s lack of attention. But there are methods to bring her looks back and him back to bed which involve the dark practices of the ancestor she shares a name with. Blood is the secret and shockingly, her husband is only too willing to get it for her.
Where you’d expect a film awash in blood and gore, this is a movie more about how women deal with aging and men that only see beauty in youth. And yes, there’s still plenty of bloodbathing along the way.
Ewa Aulin (Candy, Death Laid an Egg) is also in this. Sadly, Aulin didn’t enjoy acting and was done by the age of 23.
So many versions of this film were released in the U.S. in PG form. The Mondo Macabro release has the fully uncut International and alternate Spanish cuts of the film, along with interviews with the director and two commentary tracks (Troy Howarth and Nathaniel Thompson; Robert Monell and Rod Barnett).
This is yet another must-have for your horror collection. I wish Grau had made more films in the genre, if only because his movies end up having so many alternate titles.
Here’s some trivia you can use on your friends. Santee was one of the first motion pictures to be shot electronically on videotape, using Norelco PCP-70 portable plumbicon NTSC cameras and portable Ampex VR-3000 2″ VTRs.
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 has finally reconnected with his father, just in time to learn that he’s an outlaw on the run from a bounty hunter named Santee (Glenn Ford). There’s not any time for a reunion as the entire gang gets gunned down and Jody decides that he’ll kill Santee himself. However, they end up becoming father and son, as Jody may have lost his father, but the old gunslinger lost his son.
This has a fun cast, with 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).
This was produced by Edward Platt, The Chief on Get Smart, who raised the money to buy the videocameras. One can only assume that he got Nelson the job of directing the TV movie Get Smart, Again.
“A Supercharged Girl! Always Ready For Action . . . of Any Kind!!” — Copywriter innuendo to make you buy that ticket
While this sounds like a female-spun, Sexploitation-era James Bond knockoff, à la Cherie Caffaro’s Ginger McAllister from Ginger (1971), The Abductors (1972), and Girls Are For Loving (1973) — which, along with Ted V. Mikels’s The Doll Squad and Andy Sidaris’s Stacey, foretold Charlie’s Angels — Superchick is actually one of film’s first feminist tomes — this one starring Joyce Jillson in her feature film debut after making her mark with the late ’60s, hit U.S. television drama, Peyton Place.
And since this is a Crown International Pictures release: John Carradine (Nocturna) is in tow — as a worn out “B” movie actor, so, pretty much himself. And yes, there’s nudity from Joyce and cameoing porn star Candy Samples. So there’s that to ponder. Oh, and yes, that is an uncredited Dan “Grizzly Adams” Haggerty as a biker. So there’s also that.
To say this is awful is an understatement. But this is one of those picked-up-for-a-dollar home video rentals with bad acting, worst dialog, and clumsy karate action sequences that gives you a good ol’ time — in a Rudy Ray Moore as Dolemitekind-a-way.
Joyce’s Tara B. True is a “superchick”: a sexually-liberated bachelorette who works her long blonde hair and even longer, silky legs as an airline stewardess to bed three men — a sexy beach bum, a rockstar musician, and an older, wealthy gentleman — during her weekly trips through New York, Miami, and Los Angeles. Why settle down, when each man has the qualities she needs to feel loved and feel free? In between, she earns a black belt in karate and adds frequent flyer miles to her “Mile High Club” membership.
That freedom is soon jeopardized when the loan shark her Floridian beach bum lover is indebted to blackmails her into committing an in-flight robbery. But she turns the tables and stops the hi-jacking . . . so she is a lot like Cherie Caffaro’s ass-kickin’ Ginger McAllister after all.
The influence of this movie can’t be denied: In 2022 D’Arcy Drollinger crafted a bat shite crazy homage the genre with the recently reviewed S**t & Champagne.
Denied! There’s no free rips and it’s been pulled from Amazon Prime. And that’s why we have Mill Creek box sets, such as their B-Movie Blast 50-movie set that we’re reviewing this month. If you need another one — and more of the same, and don’t we all — from director Ed Forsyth, then check out Chesty Anderson, USN.
About the Author: You can learn more about the writings of R.D Francis on Facebook.He also writes for B&S About Movies.
Santo made eight movies in 1973 and I can honestly recommend every single one of them to you.
That’s because in the world of Santo, anything can happen. Sometimes, Santo movies are just about wrestling. Other times, they are take on whatever trends are hot, like Eurospy films, Hammer movies or even karate films.
For example, this one starts with Santo and his girlfriend Lina (Nubia Marti, Santo vs. the She Wolves) go to visit her uncle, Professor Cristaldi. It turns out that 400 years ago, their family killed Dracula and the Wolfman, who are back for revenge from the grave.
Santo gets Blue Demon on board for help, while the monsters plan on turning Lina and her family into monsters. He even turns Lina’s mom into a vampire and kidnaps her, which is a really devious move.
The werewolf’s name is Rufus Rex. Do you need a better reason to watch this movie? How about Santo and Blue Demon defeat evil by throwing both of them into a put of spikes?
Aldo Monti — as Dracula — menaced Santo before in Santo in the Treasure of Dracula, which was recut and re-released with full color (and full frontal nudity) — to the chagrin of the Santo family — as El Vampiro y El Sexo.
Man, Dennis Weaver can’t catch a break when he’s in a Paul Wendkos movie. In The Ordeal of Dr. Mudd, he’s imprisoned for treated John Wilkes Booth. And in Cocaine: One Man’s Seduction, McCloud is blasting nose candy right past his trademark mustache. But here, it’s Last House on the Left or Straw Dogs as a TV movie, with Weaver and his family — argumentative son who doesn’t want to go to college, wife who feels frumpy and nascent women’s libber daughter (Susan Dey!) — going up against an ersatz Manson Family on a beach vacation.
The leader of this group, Jerry, is played by Scott Hylands, who would much later play Dr. Mercurio Arboria, the kindly creator of The Arboria Institute in Beyond the Black Rainbow. He uses psychological warfare, bugs in the family’s RV and a PA system to drive the nuclear unit to madness and eventual revenge.
The cast also includes Michael Christian (Eddie from Poor Pretty Eddie), Roberta Collins (Matilda the Hun from Death Race 2000), Jacqueline Giroux (Snow White in Cinderella 2000 and Linda from Gary Graver’s Trick or Treats) and Carol White (Spider from Chained Heat). If you ever wondered why I love TV movies so much, it’s because there’s such a crossover between them and the exploitation trash I love with an equally impure devotion.
This never gets as crazy as it should, but the scene where the hippies sing back the nursery rhymes that the family had been singing in the privacy of their RV is really unsettling. This could have been even stranger, but hey — it was a movie you got to watch for free.
Back before John Landis became a big deal and killed Vic Morrow, he was making movies like this, inspired by 1950s monster movies. Landis wrote, directed and starred as the ape in this, wearing one of the first special effect makeup jobs by Rick Baker.
Landis couldn’t find anyone willing to release this movie, but then Johnny Carson saw the film, loved it and booked Landis as a guest on The Tonight Show. Clips got shown, Carson laughed and the film was released*.
Schlock is a prehistoric apeman — you know, just like Eegah — who has come out of a cave into Southern California to terrorize some teens. He falls for a blind girl named Mandy who really likes him — well, she thinks he’s a dog — until she regains her sight and realizes that he’s a beast. That means that the military has to put him down, with Mindy quoting Love Story and a cop says the immortal final line from King Kong. As for Professor Shlibovitz, who studies the hairy creature, he comes out of the cave with the subject for a sequel, the Son of Schlock.
Landis originally wanted to make an adult movie, but then found out that he’d have to work with the underworld. So instead, he got his family and friends to donate money and made this.
*Jack H. Harris agreed to distribute the film if John Landis added ten minutes to the running time. He gave Landis $10,000 and allowed him to use footage from The Blob and Dinosaurus! Landis almost advertised that Steve McQueen was in his film, but didn’t. Still, McQueen told him years later that he was owed money for Schlock.
Don “The Snake” Prudhomme and Tom “The Mongoose” McEwen were gods to us kids in the ’70. We bought the racing magazines and ripped out the glossy spreads of their cars and persons and Scotch Taped ’em to our bedroom doors and walls — right next to our Runaways (duBeat-e-o) and Suzi Quatro (Suzi Q) posters, and Roger Decoster’s mag-rips of his daring motocross jumps.
When the ABC Wild World of Sports held one of Prudhomme and McEwen’s drag or funny car races on a Saturday afternoon, the neighborhood streets cleared and everyone sat in front of the TV. The Snake and Mongoose were matched only by Richard Petty and Evel Knievel. They were the “Muhammad Ali” of racing. Everyone loved them.
So, to commemorate those “Funny Car Summers” of those youthful days of yore, let’s fire up that silver screen under the stars!
Man, when this commercial came on TV . . . EVERYBODY went to see this documentary that chronicles a summer in the life of “Funny Car” racer Jim Dunn and his family.
The most popular, best known, and best-distributed film of the night — it is also the most disappointing (to those wee eyes of long ago) of the films of the night. You know how great Pawn Stars and American Chopper were when they first went on the air — then they turned into a Kardashians-styled sit(shite)com that’s all about Chum Lee and Corey Harrison bumblin’ about the shop and Junior and Senior fighting? Where’s the neat junk? Where’s the bikes? Where’s Frank and Mike? Who in the hell let Danielle, this Memphis blond chick, and Mike’s bumblin’ brother on the set? Where did the pickin’ go? This is American Pickers, right?
Well, that’s what watching this movie is like: all family drama and little vroom-vroom. Way to go marketing department and Mr. Distributor. You broke our little-tyke hearts — and pissed off our parents, who paid the drive-in fare, because we bitched from the backseat that we were bored — and watched 99 and 44/100% Dead (or was it The Exorcist) through the rear window, instead.
You can watch Funny Car Summer on You Tube HERE and HERE.
Wheels On Fire is a classic motor sports documentary — and also one of the most obscure and hard-to-find (as you can see, it’s even impossible to find a decent image of the theatrical one-sheet). But not in the land of Oz, since this was filmed in Liverpool, Sydney. This one kicks ass because of — before there were web-cam and fiber optics — has the first ever “race cam” strapped onto the drag car, which takes you behind the wheel at speeds above 300 kilometers (miles in the States) per hour.
Again, this one is near impossible to track down on VHS and DVD — and the DVDs are grey market VHS-rips. And there’s no trailer or clips . . . denied.
Intermission! The Snack Bar is Open! Check out our classic drag racing poster art gallery while you wait in line!
Not to be confused (and it is) with the “on” movie above, Wheels of Fire focuses on the lives of five major drag racers of the era: Don Garlits, Don Prudhomme, Shirley Muldowney, Richard Tharp and Billy Meyer, as they are each followed through a complete drag racing season. Yep. This is reality TV before Robert Kardashian had his first kid (I think; too lazy to check K-Dash B-Days), the very same kids who unleashed the ubiquitously-hated broadcasting format.
As with the oft-confused Wheels on Fire, there’s no online streams of this lost, classic drag racing film. It was on You Tube in several parts, but was removed. Only this 10:00 minute clip is available, which we’re posting in lieu of an official trailer (. . . and don’t be surprised if it also vanishes to grey screen; yep, it’s gone). The now out-of-print DVDs are available in the online marketplace from time to time (and, as you can see, it’s impossible to find a decent theatrical one-sheet). The NHRA web platform and their upper-tier cable channel rerun it from time to time.
Documentarian Les Blank of Burden of Dreams fame, which chronicled the making of Werner Herzog’s and Klaus Kinski’s Fitzcarraldo, made his docu-debut with this drag chronicle — its seeds (A Rubber Tree plant, ha-ha! ugh.) planted courtesy of his first behind-the-camera gig shooting drag racers in Long Beach, California.
This one has it all: Souped-up “Blower” Mercurys and Chevys (like in Two-Lane Blacktop), rails, and funny cars. While it chronicles other racers, this one is a showcase for Rick “The Iceman” Stewart as he attempts to grab the world’s record — as Los Angeles’ Canned Heat Blues Band provides the musical backing.
Les Blank has made this easily accessible as an Amazon Prime and Vimeo VOD that’s also available for purchase at Les Blanks.com and on eBay.
And so goes our “Fast and Furious Week: Part Deux.” Can you smell the rubber Big Daddy is cookin’, Dwayne? And, do you have a hankering for even MORE drag racing films? Then check out our first “Fast and Furious Week” reviews of Burnout and Fast Company.
Poster by Dennis Preston for “The Great Bed Race” in Lansing, Michigan on August 11, 1979/courtesy of Splatt Gallery Facebook.
Update: In May 2021, we went drag racing crazy and reviewed several more drag flicks as part of our “Drag Racing Week” theme-feature of the month. Image Courtesy of Vectezzy.
Another drag racing doc? You bet. During out two month “Cannon Month” blow out in July and August 2022, we discovered this Cannon-distributed ditty. Who knew?
In August and December of 2020, we had two “Fast and Furious” tribute weeks filled with the aromas of burning rubberand bubbling oil.
Mill Creek’s “Savage Cinema” 12-pack got us started as we reviewed over 40 filmsin August 2020.
Yeah, we did another week with another 40-plus films.
You say you need more racing films? You mean we haven’t covered enough? Well, then head on over to Demaras Racing under their “Fast Films” section for their reviews on car flicks. From Mickey Rooney in The Big Wheel to a discussion of Dustin Hoffman’s ride in The Graduate to the cars in THX 1138 — so many that we missed or never got around to reviewing — they’ve got you covered.
About the Author: You can learn more about the writings of R.D Francis on Facebook.He also writes forB&S About Movies.
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