Somehow, The Day of the Locust is one of the few movies where William Atherton isn’t the villain. Well, he’s not the nicest guy, but he’s not the main heel here, not that anyone is the hero.

Tod is a recent Yale graduate Tod Hackett, who has just come to Hollywood to paint backgrounds in movies. He settles in the falling apart San Bernardino Arms, an apartment building that houses those at the start or the close of their Hollywood dreams.

There’s actress Faye Greener (Karen Black), her dying vaudevillian father Harry (Burgess Meredith), Adore Loomis (Jackie Earle Haley) whose stage mother (Gloria LeRoy) is pushing to be a movie star, the always angry Abe Kusich (Billy Barty) and his girlfriend Mary (Lelia Goldoni) and accountant Homer Simpson (Donald Sutherland). Everyone is in love with Faye but she only wants to settle for a rich man, even if she plays with the hearts of Tod, Homer and stuntmen Earle Shoop (Bo Hopkins) and Miguel (Pepe Serna).

Homer and Faye try to save her father by bringing him to be healed at a church led by Big Sister (Geraldine Page) that is based on the ministry of Aimee Semple McPherson. For a few moments, being in front of the crowd gives him a surge of adrenaline and he’s able to do one of his old routines before dying that night.

Faye moves in with Homer but she tells Tod that it’s a sexless relationship. At a party later, Homer watches helplessly as every man there makes a play for the woman he gives everything to. She screams and calls him a spy and launches a vase at him. Later, Tod catches her making love to Miguel, as does Earle, which leads to a fight.

The film closes as the entire cast is near the premiere of The Buccaneer. Tod tries to speak to Homer who just stares into the void. The only thing that brings him to reality is when Adore throws a rock at his head. He loses his mind and chases the boy through the night, finally catching him and repeatedly stomping him to death as the entire crowd watches. This unleashes a horrific riot that takes over the premiere, thought to be mania over the movie but instead feeling like the end of the world as Tod sees his paintings come to life and chase him into the night. He leaves Hollywood behind and the film closes on his abandoned apartment and Faye crying as she sees the flowers he left inside a crack in the wall.

I didn’t even mention that William Castle is the director of the movie within the movie!

Directed by John Schlesinger (Midnight Cowboy) and written by Waldo Salt (Coming Home) from the book by Nathaniel West, this is one of the most depressing and nihilistic movies that I have ever seen, one that shows that all of these characters are lost, their dreams are meaningless and the moments of connection that they have mean nothing to them other than sheer biological impulses. The only one of them that will be remembered is Homer and that will be as a child murderer.

The Arrow Video blu ray of The Day of the Locust has a brand new 2K remaster by Arrow Films from the original negative. Extras include a new oral history audio commentary conducted by writer and film historian Lee Gambin, featuring assistant directors Leslie Asplund and Charles Ziarko, production associate Michael Childers, actors Grainger Hines and Pepe Serna among others; an appreciation of the film by critic Glenn Kenny; a discussion with film historian Elissa Rose; a visual essay on the film’s themes with Gambin and behind the scenes image galleries. It comes inside a reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Colin Murdoch and has an illustrated collector’s booklet featuring new writing on the film by Pamela Hutchinson. You can get it from MVD.

Shot in the same time period as Le amanti del mostro — which is also directed by Sergio Garrone —  The Hand That Feeds the Dead combines the ideas of Frankenstein with one of my favorite plots, the intelligent doctor driven to mad things because of love. Also see: Eyes Without a Face, Faceless, Corruption, Mansion of the Doomed and Atom Age Vampire.

Professor Nijinski (Klaus Kinski) was working on skin grafts when a fire in his lab burned the face of his wife Tania (Katia Christine). This inferno also claims the life of the professor’s mentor — and Tania’s father — Doctor Baron Ivan Rassimov and that name has to be a joke, right?

While the mad scientist is using his hunchback assistant Vanya (Erol Taş) to kill women in the village and then use their skin in super gory — thanks Carlo Rambaldi! — surgical scenes that blew my mind. I mean, there are tubes everywhere, small balls filled with blood and machinery that is needlessly — and therefore, totally awesome — complicated.

Also staying in the decaying mansion is Sonia (Stella Calderoni), newlyweds Masha and Alex (Katia Christine and Ayhan Isik) and Katja (Marzia Damon), who is looking for her missing sister. Somehow, in the midst of this surgical gore freakout, there’s also an extended lesbian makeout, which may not make sense until you realize that Garrone also made SS Experiment Camp and the most horror-filled Italian Western there has ever been, Django the Bastard.

This was produced by Turkish Şakir V. Sözen, who cast Ayhan Işık and provided the villa in Istanbul where it was filmed. It was not released in Turkey until 1986 after actor and producer Yilmaz Duru bought it from Sözen and released it as Ölümün Nefesi (Bread of Death).

I absolutely went wild for this movie. Yes, it’s not the greatest Italian horror movie ever, but man, those surgical scenes look great even today when it comes to practical special effects. As always, I also love seeing Kinski and waiting for him to get worked up.

Frankenstein all’italiana – Prendimi, straziami, che brucio de passion! (Frankenstein Italian Style – Take Me, Torture Me, as I am Burning with Passion!) has Dr. Frankenstein (Gianrico Tedeschi) getting married to the beautiful Janet (Jenny Tamburi, Smile Before Death, The Psychic). The problem? His creature (Aldo Maccione) is still walking around and attacks the wedding. He breaks into pieces and the doctor decides to make a new creature who soon falls for Janet. And when he tries to get Igor (Ninetto Davoli) to watch her, his assistant also becomes sexually attracted to her.

This was the eighth and final theatrical movie by Armando Crispino, who made dark movies like Autopsy and The Dead Are Alive, which give no hint to the fact that he was going to do a horror comedy. It was written by Massimo Franciosa and Luisa Montagnana (Spasmo).

Also: The Creature has a giant penis. My people, the Italians, seem fascinated by this thought, as it also appears in the more berserk Frankenstein 80. 

Jessica (Sondra Currie) and her new husband Seth Hartwell (Rigg Kennedy) are Mormons on the way to Utah when Frank Brock (Ben Frank) and his men attack. They make him watch each of them have sex with her and shoot them both. He dies, she doesn’t and soon she’s learning how to shoot a gun from Rufe (Rod Cameron) and bringing three female convicts — Kana (Ellyn Stern), Rachel (Jennifer Bishop) and Claire (Regina Carroll) — to get revenge.

I’m always a bit strange about rape revenge movies because to get on the lead’s side, we have to watch them go through hell. This movie does get pretty fun — almost too fun, it has scenes where women have sex so powerful that dying and injured men become healthy — but that seems not from the same movie as the dark opening.

You can watch this on Tubi.

What a mix of ideas!

The sequel to The Naughty Stewardesses, this was supposed to be a 1940s throwback, which is why the Ritz Brothers — well, Harry and Jimmy as Alan had died — as well as Yvonne De Carlo, Don “Red” Barry and Robert Livingston are all in the cast. It was supposed to star the Three Stooges — which would have been Moe Howard, Joe DeRita and Emil Sitka — but Moe was too sick to be able to be in it.

It was going to be called The Jet Set before Blazing Saddles came out and the film became a Western, even if it’s also been released under the titles Cathouse Cowgirls, Texas Layover and The Great Truck Robbery.

At least the girls from the first movie — Debbie (Connie Hoffman), Barbara (Marilyn Joii) and Lori (Regina Carroll) — are back. They take a vacation at the Lucky Dollar Ranch, which is run by Brewster (Livingston), who is also playing the role he had in The Naughty Stewardesses. Masked riders soon appear and attack. There’s also a brothel that’s owned by Honey Morgan (De Carlo).

Would you enjoy watching the Ritz Brothers eat a really big sandwich from an entire movie? Then this is for you. That said, they were really influential among comedians if not successes in Hollywood. They also are in Won Ton Ton, the Dog Who Saved Hollywood.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Today’s movie is brought to you by AC Nicholas, who has graciously become a Big B&S’er, a monthly supporter of the site and got to pick an entire week of movies. Would you like to have me write about the movies of your choice? It’s simple!

1. Go to our Ko-Fi site and donate. There’s no set amount and I won’t tell you what to do. In fact, if you just keep reading for free, we can still be friends.
2. Join as a monthly member for just $1. That makes you a Little B&S’er.
3. As a Medium B&S’er at just $3 a month, if you pick a movie or a director, I’ll write about them for you. In fact, I’ll do one for each month you subscribe and even dedicate the post to you.
4. For $5 a month, you basically get some major power. As a Big B&S’er, I’ll write an entire week on any subject you’d like. How awesome would that be? In fact, I’ll do it for every month you’re a member. Do you think any of your other movie sites will do that for you?

Naked Came the Stranger is based on a hoax.

Mike McGrady was convinced that books had become so dirty — just read Harold Robbins and Jacqueline Susann — that any book could be a best seller if it had sex in it. He recruited nineteen men and five women from Newsday including 1965 Pulitzer Prize winner Gene Goltz, 1970 Pulitzer Prize winner Robert W. Greene and journalist Marilyn Berge. The book, which he edited with Harvey Aronson to ensure that it was not well-written in the least, was written by Penelope Ashe, who would be played by McGrady’s sister-in-law Billie Young.

After selling 20,000 copies, McGrady went on The David Frost Show and told America that it was all a lie. It sold 70,000 more copies after that.

According to The Washington Post, “Mr. McGrady and the other writers had nothing to do with the hardcore film with the same title. They did, however, see the movie at a Times Square theater. During one vivid scene, Aronson told The Charlotte Observer, someone shouted “Author, author! Seventeen of us stood up.”

Working under his Henry Paris name for directing (his middle name and favorite city) and Jake Barnes (the narrator of Hemmingway’s The Sun Also Rises) for writing, Radley Metzger created this adult adaption of the book. Gilly (Darby Lloyd Rains) and Billy (Levi Richards) host a morning show. He’s always been able to sleep around in the marriage — she catches him with their assistant Phyllis (Mary Stuart) — but something has always held her back. This will be the day in which she unleashes herself, even if it keeps ending up in failure.

When she finally gets it together, she has a memorable moment with Marvin (Alan Marlow) in the second floor of a bus in a daring scene shot with no permits, obviously. She also gets Phyllis for herself and even has a classy silent movie black and white love scene with Teddy (Grant Taylor).

If the movie they’re watching in the beginning seems familiar, it’s British freakout Bizarre AKA Secrets of Sex.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Today’s movie is brought to you by AC Nicholas, who has graciously become a Big B&S’er, a monthly supporter of the site and got to pick an entire week of movies. Would you like to have me write about the movies of your choice? It’s simple!

1. Go to our Ko-Fi site and donate. There’s no set amount and I won’t tell you what to do. In fact, if you just keep reading for free, we can still be friends.
2. Join as a monthly member for just $1. That makes you a Little B&S’er.
3. As a Medium B&S’er at just $3 a month, if you pick a movie or a director, I’ll write about them for you. In fact, I’ll do one for each month you subscribe and even dedicate the post to you.
4. For $5 a month, you basically get some major power. As a Big B&S’er, I’ll write an entire week on any subject you’d like. How awesome would that be? In fact, I’ll do it for every month you’re a member. Do you think any of your other movie sites will do that for you?

The Image AKA The Punishment of Anne was based on L’Image, a high class dirty book if there ever was one. According to the Rialto Report, it was written by “Jean de Berg, later to be revealed as the pseudonym of Catherine Robbe-Grillet, a mysterious French writer, photographer, and actress of Armenian descent, who was also married to the French writer and filmmaker Alain Robbe-Grillet.”

Broken up into ten chapters, this is the story of Jean (Carl Parker), an older writer who has come to Paris and who soon meets an old friend by the name of Claire (Marilyn Roberts). He’s soon part of her world of BDSM along with her younger partner Anne (Mary Mendum, Metzger’s girlfriend at the time, she would also appear in several Joe Sarno movies).

What’s really interesting in the above-mentioned Rialto Report article is that beyond the interiors being shot in a property owned by Roy Cohn was that none of the leads believe they performed any of the sex in director Radley Metzer’s first hardcore film.

This was way rougher than many were ready for, even in the Golden Age, but it retains its classy feel despite of that. Just like The Score, Metzger shows a side of the bedroom that many even today don’t want to see or even discuss.