Rene Bond week (August 11 – 17) Rene Bond could brighten up even the most dreary productions, and she was in plenty of them. In the early adult scene she was one of the better actors, particularly when it came to comedy, though she could squeeze into some leather and throw the whips around when the role called for it. Bond appeared in somewhere near 100 films, thanks to her affable professionalism she worked with many filmmakers multiple times and regularly performed with her boyfriend Ric Lutze. Her career received an enhancement when she became one of the first stars to get a boobjob. She retired from film in the late-70s just as the porno chic era was dying down, but before the video era. You can find her in a ton of SWV titles, so take yer pick!

This was the first movie that Nicholas Meyer ever wrote. Yes, the same guy who wrote The Day After, Time After Time and the two good Star Trek films (two and four, if you’re playing at home) started right here. One day when he left to visit his parents, the script was altered and young Mr. Meyer wanted to take his name off of the project, but was convinced by his manager that he needed a credit.

Neil Agar (William Smith, Grave of the Vampire) is a special agent for the State Department sent to investigate the numerous deaths at government-sponsored Brandt Research.

It turns out that the scientists there are more obsessed with sex than their research to the point that some of them are literally getting balled to death. By the way, I’m on a quest to get the word balling and ball used in the vernacular again. Please help me.

The truth is the women of the research lab have all become Bee Girls through self-induced mutation. Now they have eyes that allow them to see like insects and the instincts of using and destroying men, several of whom totally welcome the end.

The main reason to watch this is Anitra Ford as Dr. Susan Harris. You may remember her from The Big Bird Cage and being a model on The Price Is Right. She’s in one of my favorite movies, 1972’s Messiah of Evil. If you haven’t seen that, you should probably just stop reading this right now and get on that.

Victoria Vetri plays the heroine, Julie Zorn. Using the name Angela Dorian, she was the Playboy Playmate of the Month for September 1967 and 1968’s Playmate of the Year. When Apollo 12 went to the moon, a photo of her and Playmates Leslie Bianchini, Reagan Wilson and Cynthia Myers was there, inserted into the activity astronaut cuff checklists.

She also appears in Rosemary’s Baby and When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth. In 2010, nearly a quarter-century into her marriage to Bruce Rathgeb, Vetri was charged with attempted murder after allegedly shooting her husband at close range after an argument. She received nine years in prison on a charge that was finally reduced to attempted voluntary manslaughter. Her husband claimed that she had been saying, “No more Charlie, no more Charlie,” as she’d been convinced that Charles Manson wanted her dead ever since her friend Sharon Tate was killed. In fact, the gun that she used was given to her by Roman Polanski, who her husband claimed that she often slept with along with Tate. Vetri is in a halfway house now and working on making her way back to society.

This movie is also known as Graveyard Tramps, which has nothing to do with what it’s really about. You should watch it anyway.

There are several Bee Girls — called Bee Ladies in the credits — and they include Colleen Brennan (who also used the name Sharon Kelly and is in Russ Meyer’s Supervixens and Ilsa She-Wolf of the SS), Kathy Hilton (If You Don’t Stop It… You’ll Go Blind!!!), Sharon Madigan (Truck Turner) and, perhaps most importantly, Rene Bond, appearing in one of the nineteen movies she made in 1973 and one of the few mainstream efforts. Actually the only one.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Here’s a drink recipe.

Invasion of the Bee’s Knees

• 2 oz. gin
• .75 oz. lemon juice
• .75 oz. honey syrup
• 1 oz. egg white
• Dash of honey

1. Place all ingredients in a shaker, then shake vigorously.
2. Pour into a glass and enjoy.

Golden Oldies Week (July 27 – August 3) Something Weird Video have released such a wide range of movies over the last 30 years that trying to categorize them can be tricky. They started out as a gray market mail order distributor (aka a bootlegger) not unlike the Cape Copy Center or Sinister Cinema and eventually moved into the niche se ploit titles that would set them apart. The movies on this list are the kind of cult genre titles that were the bread and butter of many of the bootleg companies of the 90s and most were not exclusive to SWV. If you look in the catalogs or on the website these would be under categories like “Nightmare Theatre’s Late Night Chill-O-Rama Horror Show,” “Jaws of the Jungle,” “Sci-fi Late Night Creature Feature Show,” or “Spies, Thighs & Private Eyes.” Many of these are currently available as downloads from the SWV site (until the end of 2024)!

The problem with being Count Dracula is that your family line will eventually have to deal with in-breeding, which means that your lone male heir is a one-eyed, furry-faced boy Oh yeah — and your daughters may appear to be highly cultured musicians by day, but by night, they seduce any man — or woman — in their path, even priests. Actually, if Leon Klimovsky’s La Saga de los Draculas taught me anything, it’s that I don’t want to be Count Dracula.

If you’ve encountered any Spanish vampire films, you know that for every moment of sheer surrealist glee or breast baring blood blasting scene, you have to deal with long stretches where not much happens. Then again, we kind of specialize in movies where not much happens until the insane end of the film around here.

Berta is the long-lost relative of the Dracula clan who has returned home to the family castle, where all hopes of a male heir are pinned upon her. By the end of the film, she’s full-on bonkers, dispatching her cheating husband who has already consorted with all of her nubile relatives, then wipes them all out while they sleep in their coffins with an axe. Of course, that’s never worked on vampires before, but this film also features blood drinkers walking around in broad daylight.

By the end, she’s delivered her own baby and lied to the Count, who doesn’t struggle when she attacks him. That said, her blood gets all over the baby, who eagerly laps it up, ensuring that the Dracula bloodline will go on.

The print that played at the Drive-In Super Monster Rama was afflicted with a nasty case of vinegar syndrome, meaning that it would run for ten minutes and then fall apart, with credits that weren’t even worth running. That didn’t matter at all — by 2:30 AM I had ingested several strong ciders, some moonshine, some blazing hot slices of Buffalo chicken pizza and perhaps some other things that we can’t legally discuss. As the windows of our car fogged up and my wife slept by my side, I was pulled into the family dalliances of the Draculas.

It has everything you want from a European 1970’s vampire film: Helga Line leading an attractive cast of female blood suckers, some fine gore and even some cinematography that approaches art, mixed with — you guessed it — long stretches where people just talk and listen to some Bach. It’s certainly unlike any vampire film I’ve seen before. That — and the environment in which I watched it for the first time — added to my enjoyment.

Bleeding Skull’s Top 50 (July 7 – 13) The middle-brow champions of low-brow horror, Bleeding Skull has picked out some of their favorites from the SWV catalog. They neglected to put I Drink Your Blood or EEGAH! on the list, but I think I can forgive them since they included Ship of Monsters. 

You better like the song “Beware of the 4-D Witch!” when you watch this. Written by Joe Bisko with vocals by Johnny by the Way and music by Attila Galamb, it’s one of two songs that plays through nearly all of this movie, which wasn’t recorded with synched sound and instead has voiceovers. You will hear this song so many times that you may lose your mind.

The other songs are Wagner’s “Tristan and Isolde,” Ravel’s “Bolero,” Mussorgsky’s “Night On Bald Mountain,” Holst’s “Mars, Bringer of War (from The Planets suite)” and strangely enough, “A Saucerful of Secrets” by Pink Floyd.

I have no idea who Victor Luminera was or is. This is all that he created and left us with and you know, it’s enough. How does one describe this movie?

Let me try.

The end of the 70s occult fascination mixed with props made by Ben Cooper overlayed with nudie cutie style filmmaking that never becomes sexy all with overlaid images like you’re tripping acid at the Fillmore while Kenneth Anger possesses Victor to make something like his films but with no budget and the lowest quality camera ever made.

Cindy (Margo, her only name) promised her daddy she’d be a virgin but she loves the occult and is as horny as me after walking through the saloon doors to the adult section of Heads Together. Abigail the 4D Witch (Esoterica) promises her a rich fantasy sex life if she follows her. Together, they have Super Orgasms and travel on the astral plane like the wet dreams of Chris Claremont.

One of their missions has them making gay neighbor Mr. Jones (Kelly Guthrie, The Sexorcist) straight — problematic! — and then they get Cindy’s friend Jan Kleinmetz (Tracy Handfuss, who unlike many folks in this was in more than one movie; she’s also in A Clock Work Blue, Did Baby Shoot Her Sugardaddy? and in the starring role — Toni Carrione — in The Goddaughter) all goofed up on spider venom and human blood, which leads her to play with a snake that slithers its way out of her asshole. Yes, this happens and it feels like a Tim Vigil comic book come to life.

The problems happen when the fantasy sex — as Abigail says, “Let’s fantasy fuck now!” — gets out of hand and Jan gets hurt. It turns out that the 4D Witch is angry that Cindy — in a past life — stole her lover and this is all about revenge, but like a square up reel, Cindy learns that prayer can stop the occult. This leads to Jan waking up from death and saying, “Salem, witch bitch!”

Somehow, the movie continues and Cindy’s brother Mark (Tom Yerian) becomes the King of the Sex Vampires, I shit you not. If you’re shocked that a copy of Look with Anton LaVey on the cover appears, you haven’t been paying attention.

The Fourth Dimension is beyond good and evil, so who are we to judge the 4D Witch? It remains untouched by science. Somewhere in all this, Jan also has a sapphic moment with her Aunt Fanny (Annette Michael, who appeared as Annette Anderson in Flesh Gordon). Jan has more problems with liking women than with incest, so…yeah. The only thing that can stop this 4D Witch and her curse is an actual orgasm from a doctor, which makes me wonder about said therapist’s ethics and the idea that reality can be more powerful than fantasy.

This is the kind of movie that promises and delivers necrophilia and yet censors out every use of the word fuck after the first time it is uttered.

Amazingly — thanks to Bill Van Ryn of Groovy Doom and Drive-In Asylum — this played Hawaiian drive-ins with The Devil’s Rain! An Anton LaVey double feature!

You can watch this on Tubi.