Nathan H. Juran directed plenty of films, but we probably know him best for  Attack of the 50 Foot Woman, The Deadly Mantis, 20 Million Miles to Earth and The 7th Voyage of Sinbad. Becca and I had seen the trailer for years, but this was one of those films that you could only find on the grey market until Shout! Factory released it this year.

Robert Bridgestone (who starred in Juran’s aforementioned Sinbad film) is a divorced dad who tries to bond with his son, Richie, by taking him on a camping trip. On a midnight hike, the men are attacked by a werewolf, but Robert is able to toss it into a ravine where it’s revealed to be a human, impaled on a wooden fence. The sheriff and Robert are happy with the conclusion that the man was simply a drifter, but Richie isn’t so sure. And since his father was bitten in the attack, he’s worried about what will happen next.

Sandy, Robert’s ex-wife, insists that father and son go to counseling together, because Richie has become obsessed with lycanthropes. The psychiatrist (George Gaynes, Commandant Eric Lassard from the Police Academy series) believes that Richie has invented the werewolf story as he can’t deal with the knowledge that his father has killed another man. He suggests they go back to the camp, an act he believes will stop Richie’s fixation with werewolves.

As they return to the cabin, Robert finds himself in great pain and transforms into a werewolf that chases Richie — who has no idea that the beast is his father — across a highway. The werewolf attacks and massacres a driver while Richie hides with two newlyweds who are camping. Finding his father missing, Richie stays with the couple, but when Robert comes to get him in the morning, he’s ill-tempered and not about to listen to his son’s werewolf shenanigans.

The next night, Robert changes into a beast again, but Richie has already found a hiding space. No worries — the werewolf will kill the newlyweds instead, shoving their camper down a hill, then mutilating their bodies and decapitating them. Richie emerges just in time to see his father go from wolf back to man. As they drive back home, Richie grills his father, who doesn’t take kindly to it. When they get back to his mother’s house, he runs, telling her he doesn’t want to be alone with a monster.

After another visit to the psychiatrist, its determined that between the divorce and murders, Richie sees his father as a beast. The film would be much more interesting here were there any doubt as to whether Robert was the werewolf. But no — instead the entire family is put into harm’s way. Too bad they didn’t see the headline of today’s paper: Local Psychiatrist Murdered.

As the estranged family heads out to camp, they run across a hippie commune. Sandy enters their circle of power that wards away evil spirits, but when Robert tries to join her, he is stopped dead in his tracks.

Back at the cabin, that whole 1970’s liberated women need men and were all wrong for divorcing their spouses paradigm rears its ugly head. Sandy confesses how much she missed Robert, who starts transforming into a wolf.

Robert finds Richie in the shed and begs his son to lock him in. Sandy barges in, only to nearly be killed. They escape to the sheriff’s office, but no one will believe Richie. Even now. I mean, he may be the most annoying kid ever, but his logic is starting to add up.

Even after he attacks the hippies, they pray for his soul and watch him transform. That night, he rises again and a search party — read that as mob of angry townsfolk — give chase. The wolf grabs Richie and bites him on the arm before he’s shot and stumbles onto a stake in the ground, which pierces his heart.

Everyone is shocked as the werewolf reveals his true form: Robert. But Sandy is more concerned that her son is now a werewolf, thanks to his father’s bite.

The Boy Who Cried Werewolf can’t live up to the manic trailer that sold it to me. But it’s still an enjoyable yarn, mixing end of the 20th century problems — divorce and hippies, man — with the traditional werewolf mythos.

Man, these student teachers. They’re changing the old ways of high school and making it better — well, maybe more interesting — for the hip now generation. The sequel to Roger Corman’s The Student Nurses, this movie is all about the issues, man.

Directed and co-written by Jonathan Kaplan, who would go on to direct The Accused, this movie follows three student teachers: Rachel who wants to teach the good parts of sex education after school (that is, birth control and that sex isn’t this alien, frightening thing); Tracey dates an art teacher who cheats on her; and Jody works with an inner-city education effort but also gets involved in selling drugs.

Chuck Norris made his debut in this film as a karate instructor. In his autobiography, he revealed that he knew nothing of the film other than the scene he was in. When the movie was released, Norris and his family went to see it and were shocked by the explicit sex and nudity. In fact, Norris almost changed his mind about becoming an actor!

To say this movie is dated is an understatement. That said, it’s packed with the earnestness of the end of the 1970’s and the feeling that young people would change the world. They all ended up repeating the same cycle as their parents by the early 80’s. But for now, they would be the student teachers.

You can watch this streaming on Amazon Prime.

As we were rewatching this film last week, Becca 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 its 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 it hides in its heart 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 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 that 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 is 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, Madingo, 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.

I love having people over to our house to watch movies. However, some folks don’t get to watch the really strange films in our collection. They have to make it through a test to see if they can hang. I’ve had the misfortune of trying to explain Beyond the Valley of the Dolls to people and get angry, then sad, then angry again when they just don’t get it. If you make it through my cinematic ring of fire, the journey through excess and madness and horror, then and only then are you greeted by the final challenge: 1973’s epic freakout The Baby.

This isn’t a movie that I’ve known about forever. Quite to the contrary — I discovered it two years ago when the trailer played during one of the all-night drive-in events at the Riverside Drive-In. The blast of strangeness in that trailer was enough to get Becca and I repeating the dialogue for weeks: “What have you done with my Baby?”

Luckily, Bill from Groovy Doom/Drive-In Asylum had a copy that he was only too happy to bring to our house. Too often these days, we’re greeted with too much hype for movies, with statements like, “If you don’t love this movie, you don’t understand cinema!” and “This movie shook me to my very core!” Well, I can honestly say that The Baby has destroyed my mind in a way that no film made before or since ever has.

Ann Gentry (Anjanette Comer, The Loved One) is a social worker who has just been assigned to the incredibly strange Wadsworth family. There’s Mrs. Wadsworth (Ruth Roman, who not only starred in Strangers on a Train, but survived the sinking of the Andrea Doria), the strong-willed mother. Her daughters Alba (Susanne Zenor, who was the original Samantha in the pilot of TV’s Three’s Company before Suzanne Somers took over the role), who teaches tennis, and Germaine (the transcendent Marianna Hill, Messiah of Evil, Schizoid, Blood Beach), who occasionally acts in TV commercials when she’s not looking like a maniac. And finally, there’s Baby (David Manzy), a twentysomething man who doesn’t walk or talk and who has been raised as an infantilized adult.

You just read that right. This is a movie about a grown-up baby that sits in a crib and cries, but not just as cries. The original track containing baby sounds that  Manzy worked so hard to craft during the filming was lost, so the voice of an actual baby was used. It’s disconcerting to say the very least. Add in that the actor completely shaved his body for the role and you have the foundations for a movie that’s more than a little left of center.

Ann is driven to improve the lives of her cases, but Baby is a special case. Perhaps too special to Ann, as she’s recently recovering from a severe auto accident that had a serious effect on her husband. The Wadsworth family totally depends on Baby for most of their income and as a result, won’t allow him to grow into an adult. And it seems like Ann could change all that, as she discovers that Baby’s current state is the result of neglect.

“Baby doesn’t talk. Baby doesn’t walk.” Baby also isn’t allowed to do things by himself, either being beaten, cattle prodded or restrained when he does anything against the rules. Even when Ann shows the family that Baby has the capacity for growth, she’s instantly rebuffed.

If all of the above was all that this movie would be about, it would still rank amongst the oddest ever made. But it gets much stranger. You see, nearly every woman who meets Baby wants to possess him. And some often want to have sex with him, like the sitter who gets into his crib and allows him to nurse from her. The Wadsworths come back home to this scene and proceed to annihilate the young girl and beat Baby into further submission. And even Baby’s sisters may love him a little more than siblings should.

Finally, the simmering discord between Ann and Baby’s family comes to a head on the night of Baby’s birthday party — which is the strangest one committed to film since perhaps Jessabelle the cat’s celebration in The Sentinel. That said, any party that has Michael Pataki as a guest is one that I want to be at!

After escaping the murderous intent of the Wadsworths, Ann finally succeeds in taking Baby away. Rather than turning him over to an institution, she keeps him at her house and then sends his family photos of their manchild doing adult things like standing up straight.

This sends the Wadsworth clan into a murderous tailspin, as they head for Ann’s house with killing in mind. However, she and her mother-in-law aren’t willing to give up their new guest without a fight.

Even though this film was made over forty years ago, I’m not giving you the ending here. I want you to see it for yourself with no preparation whatsoever.

Now, after reading all of the above, you have to be thinking — surely The Baby is an unrated affair or at worst it got an R, right? Nope. This is a PG movie. The 1970’s did not care at all about children, blasting them with both barrels of bonkers with movies like this, The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane and It’s Alive all getting just a simple Parental Guidance suggested label.

Here’s the next surprise: The Baby wasn’t an underground film. Nope, it was a mainstream release directed by Ted Post, who directed numerous TV series like GunsmokeThe Twilight Zone and 178 episodes of Peyton Place, as well as Hang ‘Em High, Magnum Force, Beneath the Planet of the Apes and the TV movies Do Not Fold, Spindle, or Mutilate and Cagney and Lacey, which led to the series. The dark nature of this film kept Post away for a year before writer Abe Polsky was able to talk him into getting behind the lens.

The Severin blu ray of this film was a great package, complete with informative interviews with Post and Manzy. Arrow Video is releasing a new version this week with even more extras, including newly commissioned artwork by The Twins of Evil, deep commentary by Travis Crawford, interviews with Marianna Hill and one of the set painters and a discussion with film professor Rebekah McKendry on the influence of the film. It’s a great package that truly does this movie justice.

Back to the hype engine that sours so many on so many movies. Often, you’ll read things about how movies have permanently changed lives and scoff. I’m telling you that the way that I view movies and live has been forever altered by this movie. It’s hard for me to find another film that can match it for sheer audacity and bizarre subject matter. However, no words that I write can do it justice. You must watch it for yourself and be changed by the act of viewing it.

You can grab the new Arrow Video release of The Baby from Diabolik DVD.

BONUS! Here’s the podcast where we discuss The Baby in detail with Bill!

Disclaimer: I was sent this movie by its PR team, but as you know, that has no bearing on my review.

Harry Thomason and his wife, Linda Bloodworth-Thomason created TV’s Designing Women and were a 1990’s power couple, playing a major role in getting President Bill Clinton elected. But way before that, he wrote and directed this Rod Serling narrated film.

This movie presents its tales as true, set up by not one narrator, but two. Yes, Rod Serling was not enough. Let that sink in.

“The Heptagon” starts at the funeral of a college student. It turns out that three guys all played a prank that led to his death. A curse from his mother — the seventh daughter of a seventh son — leads to every one of them dying.

“The Darkness” is about a boy’s dog disappearing into a hole to hell and his father going insane after he tries to visit the hole. This feels like a retelling of the Shaver mysteries (see our review of Beyond Lemuria to learn more), although one possibly insane IMDB reviewer claims that they’ve been to the actual hole. There’s also an IMDB review of the film from the voice of the hole itself! Does this have something to do with the voices from Hell that have been proven to be audio from Baron Blood?

Finally, “The Girl on the Bridge” retells the urban legend “The Vanishing Hitchhiker,” which has variations all over the country (check out this North Carolina one). Rosie Holotik from Horror High and Don’t Look in the Basement plays the title character, which takes this movie up several letter grades.

The end of the film feels like it keeps wrapping everything up, only to take us back to the beginning and tell it all again. It’s a really strange narrative device that probably was the only way that this movie got to a long enough running time to play in drive-ins.

This film is an odd duck. It’s so awesome in parts and so bad in others. Serling’s voice is perfect, but you can tell he had nothing to do with the writing. And yet, it all feels like something you’d love to watch all fucked up at a drive-in around 3 AM. So, you know, this would be a definite recommendation.

Thomason would follow this up with The Great Lester Boggs, a motorcycle film featuring ex-football player Alex Karras as a cop, The Day It Came to Earth and Revenge of Bigfoot, which starred Motel Hell‘s Rory Calhoun. Then, after writing and producing for The Fall Guy, he started moving in much more powerful circles.

If you want to see this for yourself, Diabolik DVD has the Code Red blu-ray that combines this film with Sasquatch. Or you can watch it for free on Amazon Prime.

I’m constantly on the hunt for certain movies. Ever since I saw the trailer for this — the only film to ever be shot in Duo-Vision — I’ve been on the hunt. Finally, in an Exchange store on a Sunday afternoon, my patience was rewarded.

The Grandview is one of those gorgeous California hotels that you dream of living the rest of your life in, Telly Savalas style. But there’s one big problem — any blonde female who checks in never leaves. I’d make a Hotel California joke here, but that just seems too easy.

Trivia note: This is really the Hotel del Coronado, where Some Like It Hot was shot.

David Bailey, from TV’s Another World, plays hotel detective Rick Stewart, who is busy with old women who don’t pay their rent and overly amorous beachfront lotharios. Soon, he’s on the trail of the killer, which gets more personal when his ex-wife Lisa James (Tiffany Bolling, The Candy Snatchers) shows up to sing at the Grandview and promptly dyes her brunette hair blonde. Whoops.

This song is the best part of the film. Becca and I have been singing it to one another ever since we watched this.

Writer/director Richard L. Bare — who holds the record for directing the most successive number of television shows (168 episodes of Green Acres) — planned to follow up this film with another Duo-Vision movie called October Incident, which was about trying to kill Castro. The gimmick wasn’t well received so the movie was canceled.

I’d best compare Duo-Vision to the way that Ang Lee shot his version of The Hulk. The other screen often shows what’s in someone’s mind or reveals the truth of what they’re talking about. The story probably wouldn’t be anything I’d seek out if it wasn’t for Duo-Vision, but I’m glad we have this in our collection. It’s one of the rare movies we’ve seen that reveals the killer almost instantly yet remains interesting.

More trivia: Aside from the songs that Bolling sings, the film’s soundtrack is mostly made up of the piano score from 1925’s silent Phantom of the Opera. And thanks to DVD Drive-In’s George Reis, I now know that Charles B. Pierce of The Town That Dreaded Sundown fame was the set decorator!

Thanks to the Warner Archive for restoring this oddball film. I wish I had seen it on the big screen and hope to get the chance one day!

Is there such a thing as a perfect movie? Maybe. Maybe not. But if you ask me, this combination of the occult and biker culture ranks really close.

Tom Latham (Nicky Henson, Witchfinder General) leads The Living Dead, a motorcycle gang that causes trouble and occasionally dabbles in black magic. The worm filled apple didn’t fall far from the tree — Tom’s mother, deceased father and butler Shadwell (George Sanders, All About Eve and Rebecca) follow the Left Hand Path. With their help, he learns how to die and come back from the dead — roaring from his freshly buried earth on his motorcycle (later Lemmy would do this in Motörhead’s “Killed by Death” video).

Soon, one after another of the gang commit suicide and return from the dead. Soon, the gang is killing cops and menacing babies. And their names! Gash, Hatchet, Chopped Meat, Hinkey and Bertram! This movie is about pure mayhem! I wonder, was all of England in the grip of Satan in the early 1980’s?

Director Don Sharp keeps things stylish and moving. This isn’t his first go-round with frogs in cemeteries, pacts with the devil, mysterious suicides and zombies. Check out his other film, Witchcraft. He was also behind Dark Places, Hammer’s Rasputin: The Mad Monk and the final movie in The Fly series, Curse of the Fly. This is his best work, though.

You should pretty much quit whatever it is you’re doing right now and go watch this. Luckily, it’s streaming for free on Amazon Prime.

What do you write about a movie that pretty much created modern horror? Sure, you can point to Night of the Living Dead and even Carnival of Souls as starting points, but from a mainstream blockbuster perspective, this is where the rules of modern supernatural horror begin.

Inspired by William Peter Blatty’s 1971 novel, which itself was inspired by the 1949 exorcism of Roland Doe (“The Pope’s Exorcist” Malachi Martin claimed that he was the inspiration, a point that Blatty denied) the legends around this film — it was a cursed set, it’s filled with subliminal messages — supersede a very simple fact: this movie is frightening as hell, even 40 plus years later.

Do I even need to tell you the story of how Pazuzu finds its way into an Ouija board and into the soul of the daughter of an actress? Probably not. What’s striking is that how long the movie takes to get there. Scenes of Chris MacNeil (Ellen Burstyn) acting take precedence over the sad life of Father Karras, who has to deal with the death of his mother and his increasing lack of faith.

When do we realize something is wrong? When it is too late. When Regan (Linda Blair) intrudes on one of her mother’s boring parties, pisses on the floor and tells an astronaut “You’re gonna die up there.” PS — Want to know more about that guy? Then you should watch The Ninth Configuration.

Science can’t solve these issues. Detectives cannot. Only the Church can help.

What follows is a haunted house of scares that have been imitated ad nauseum (pun intended) so many times that we know the beats: head spinning, pea soup vomit, masturbation with a cross, blood, strange voices, levitation. A priest must show weakness before showing great sacrifice. And in the end, two old men find friendship in the aftermath.

It’s what is not seen that is most interesting, such as the old Hollywood directorial tricks William Friedkin used to get a reaction. He fired guns into the air to get a frightened reaction. He slapped some actors right across the face before important scenes. The painful screams of Blair and Burstyn are real — they were being yanked all over the set by stunt harnesses which caused both injuries and pain. And Regan’s bedroom was actually the inside of a freezer.

I’ve read for years about the subliminal that are supposedly hidden in the film, originally learning about them in William Poundstone’s book Big Secrets. Wilson Bryan Key — the guy who claimed that if you stack Ritz crackers up they always spell S-E-X — claimed that the film was full of images and sound effects that created a subliminal air of menace.

Friedkin has alternately claimed that subliminal messages are both “a very effective storytelling device. The subliminal editing in The Exorcist was done for dramatic effect — to create, achieve, and sustain a kind of dreamlike state” and that “there are no subliminal images. If you can see it, it’s not subliminal.”

One of the techniques used are the flashes of Captain Howdy, a demon who appears three times in the film. In an Entertainment Weekly article, Friedkin said, “You couldn’t catch it before VHS. And now you can stop the DVD and stare at it.” You’ll find the face during Regan’s examination, Dr. Karras’ dream, in the kitchen and several other places throughout the film.

Key also claimed that the word “pig” appears several times in the film, a keyword in the post-Manson era.

The site Subliminal Manipulation also writes that “the terrified squealing of pigs being slaughtered was mixed subtly into the soundtrack. The buzzing sound of angry, agitated bees wove in and out of scenes throughout the film.” They go even further to describe people fainting during the film and getting nightmares — attributed more to the subliminal than the horror content.  In addition, they say that “several theater employees were actually placed under the care of physicians and a few quit their jobs. Employees frequently had to clean up floors and rugs when nauseous spectators (mostly male, for some reason) did not quite make it to the restrooms.”

Want further conspiracy? That site also calls out author Blatty as a former CIA operative and policy-branch chief of the Psychological Warfare Division of the U.S. Air Force.

The music is another crucial element of the film. While Mike Oldfield’s Tubular Bells (actually part one of the overall record) is considered the theme for the movie, it was a complete accident that it was picked. Originally, Lalo Schifrin created six minutes of music for the trailer that were considered too frightening when combined with the images of the film. Some claim that this music was reused for The Amityville Horror, but the truth is that Friedkin hated the music that while it was being recorded, he made the orchestra stop playing and threw the tapes away in the studio parking lot — in front Schifrin and his wife. Additionally, the director claims that he wishes that had he heard them sooner, he would have used Tangerine Dream for the film (they would score his film Sorcerer).

While the film wasn’t available on video or TV in England until the 1990’s, an American TV cut has plenty of interesting changes, including director Friedkin speaking new, censored lines for Regan. In addition, this cut has a different shot of the Virgin Mary statue that cries blood and a longer shot of Regan’s face changing into a demon. This network TV cut is rarely seen today.

Friedkin used Mercedes McCambridge, a voiceover actress, to help create the signature sound of the demon’s voice. A former alcoholic, she used raw eggs, chain-smoking and whiskey to achieve the voice she used (and add to her state of mind). Plus, Friedkin demanded that she be bound to a chair while voicing the demon, to better give the sounds of restraint. She later said that the experience was one of horror and rage, while the director himself admitted that the extreme to which she went through terrified him. Plus, while she originally didn’t want any credit, once Linda Blair received a Best Supporting Actress nomination, she decided to sue so that people would know the voice as hers.

There’s also a Director’s Cut and an Extended Director’s Cut (The Version You’ve Never Seen) that has some cuts here and there, longer FX (CGI aided) for the spider walk scene and some added scenes between Father Karras and Father Merrin. These tweaks would only be noticeable to someone who has watched the film over and over again.

We’ll get to them eventually, but there were several sequels and prequels, such as Exorcist II: The Heretic, The Exorcist III, Exorcist: The Beginning and Dominion: Prequel to the Exorcist.

Was The Exorcist upsetting? Well, TV preacher evangelist Billy Graham claimed an actual demon was living inside the movie.

As for viewers today, they may be surprised at the sinister power that this movie still holds.

When horror movies have socially maladjusted kids getting abused by popular football players while showing how attractive girls can still fall for them, they’re playing directly to their demographic. How many fright fans felt the same way or endured the same stings and arrows as the hero of this film?

Everybody beats the shit of Vernon. His fellow students hate him. His teachers despise him. Even the janitor. His only friend is Robin (Rosie Holotik, Nurse Charlotte from Don’t Look in the Basement), who is dating the main football player who abuses him. And his other friend, the mouse known as Mr. Mumps? Well, he’s taking a mind-altering potion that Vernon’s developed that makes the little fella super violent. In fact, it makes him so brutal that it kills the janitor’s cat, who flips out and smashes the little fellow and forces Vernon to drink his own potion.

Pat Cardi, the actor who played Vernon, was a busy child star, playing in over 100 TV shows and appearing as a young chimp in Battle for the Planet of the Apes. He grew up to create and found MovieFone, which in the pre-internet days was how people discovered what films were playing in theaters.

Austin Stoker (Assault on Precinct 13, Abby) plays the detective who comes into the school once Vernon starts killing. The murder scenes form a proto-slasher vibe while the music is crazy, with primal power chords accentuating big moments (think the guitar sound from the Torso trailer). It also features Pittsburgh Steelers star “Mean” Joe Greene in a small role. If you live here in the Steel City, you need no introduction to Mean Joe. If you live elsewhere, he’s the player who threw a jersey to the kid in the Coca-Cola commercial. He’s also in The Black Six, one of the first all-black biker films, along with other NFL names like Gene Washington, Mercury Morris, Lem Barney, Willie Lanier and Carl Eller. Of course, we’ll be getting to this movie very soon. But until then, savor Joe in that Coke commercial:

At heart, this is a Jekyll & Hyde story (it’s Carrie before Carrie, too) but told as if it were a 1950’s teen monster movie refilmed through a 1970’s doom-laden lens. Its script comes from Jack Fowler, who is really J.D. Feigelson, writer of Wes Craven’s Chiller and Dark Night of the Scarecrow.

The film — also known as The Twisted Brain — was shot in Texas and released by Crown International in March of 1974 to the drive-in circuit. It really picked up its cult cache thanks to frequent TV airings. Code Red put out an uncut version on blu-ray in 2009, following a Rhino release of the TV version of the film. They’re both rather hard to get now, but worth seeking out. I found myself really liking this film, despite its budget and relative silliness at times.

Want to learn more? The new issue of Drive-In Asylum has an interview with director Larry Stouffer and some artwork from me that you can see here!