Tag Archives: 1976

The Sizzlin’ Something Weird Summer Challenge 2024: The Electric Chair (1976)

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Softcore Smorgasbord (August 4 – 10) All of the movies on this list have at one time or another been available through Something Weird Video. I’m sure I’ve missed some but many of them are still available on their website (until the end of 2024). These are their vintage softcore movies listed under categories with ridiculous names like: Nudie Cuties, Sexy Shockers, Sexo a-go-go, Twisted Sex, and Bucky Beaver’s Double Softies.

J.G. “Pat” Patterson Jr. only directed and wrote one other movie, The Body Shop, yet he also acted in the movies Moonshine Mountain, Preacherman and Whiskey Mountain, produced Just for the Hell of It, How to Make a Doll, She-Devils On Wheels, The Gruesome Twosome and Axe, and did makeup for Three On a Meathook. He also was the assistant director of Moonshine Mountain.

Born Jr. Junius Gustavious Patterson, he started his entertainment career as Don Brandon, doing an onstage horror show before playing movies, as well as hosting Shock Theater in Charlotte, NC as The Mad Daddy and The Monster of Ceremonies.

Sadly, he died in 1975 from metastatic malignant melanoma but he did leave behind these two films, which are right up my alley, movies made specifically for the Southern drive-in circuit featuring people from North Carolina in stories that folks from that state might be able to relate to.

Unlike The Body Shop, this avoids the heavy gore that you’d expect — well, the opening is intense — and is really about how a murder trial tears apart a small town. Rev. Samuel Moss (Barry Bell, who also was in the Earl Owensby movie Chain Gang 3D and has small parts in Maximum Overdrive and Trick or Treat) is in a loveless marriage with the older Clair (played by Patterson’s wife Nita; she also did makeup for this). He is taken by a young parishioner with a troubled marriage, Marilyn Howard (Katherine Cortez, who was much later in Critters 3) and this leads to — some may claim — their deaths. But who did the killing?

Is it cucked husband Joss Howard (Kenneth G. Sigmon)? A strange man named Mose Cooper (Patterson)? The religious man’s wife? Or someone totally unknown? Whoever it is, they’ve shot up the holy man and as for his lover, “someone ripped her tongue, right out of her head, and damn near ripped her head clean off her body!” And hey, is that Larry Drake in the courtroom? Yes. Before he became a star on L.A. Law, the actor broke in with movies like This Stuff’ll Kill Ya! and Trucker’s Woman.

Reissued as High Voltage, the selling point of this movie is the death device. It makes two appearances, once at the middle of the story and again at the end. This is exploitation, but the chair is never played as anything but the most horrifying invention of all time. Grown men get sick and almost cry, the switch is on for a long time and the final person who gets electrocuted goes out like an unrepentant killer. That’s after a big courtroom reveal and gun battle! Worth Keeter, who would go on to direct Unmasking the Idol, L.A. Bounty, The Order of the Black Eagle, Tales of the Third Dimension in 3-D and numerous episodes of Power Rangers, is one of the people who gets killed.

The strangest thing is that most of the cast is made up of locals who never did another movie, along with professionals like Don Cummins, who wrote the dialogue and also appears in Slithis and Axe as the announcer on the radio and television. He plays District Attorney Grover in this and is one of the better talents, which is faint praise when you can pick up when most of the actors are reading off crew cards. That said, this film is authentic even in how amateur hour the execution ended up.

Cinematographer Darrell Cathcart has the kind of resume that makes me crazy in the greatest of ways, as he was behind the camera for Trucker’s Woman, Death Screams, Final Exam, Lady Grey, Living Legend: The King of Rock and Roll, Wolfman, Seabo and Dark Sunday. A lot of the crew also worked on Axe, which is a movie that I hope that more people watch.

There are some reviews that hate on this film. That feels like punching down. Instead, I found this an incredibly interesting document of a time in film when regional movies could be made, even ones outside of horror.

You can watch this on YouTube.

Note: Images and information in this article come from the J.G. “Pat” Patterson Jr. Tribute Page.

CBS LATE MOVIE MONTH: Embryo (1976)

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EDITOR’S NOTE: Embryo was on the CBS Late Movie on February 25 and December 2, 1983 and March 17 and December 8, 1976.

Directed by Ralph Nelson (Charly) and written by Anita Doohan and Jack W. Thomas — who had stopped screenwriting for more than a decade to become a Los Angeles County deputy probation officer and write a series of books on troubled youth — Embryo finds Dr. Paul Holliston (Rock Hudson) living a life of solitude after losing his wife in a car accident, a fact that his sister-in-law/assistant Martha Douglas (Diane Ladd) reminds him of near daily.

One night, he runs over a dog — maybe he should stop driving — and ends up taking that dog’s unborn child and bringing it to healthy — if murderous — life in his lab. If he can play God like that, well, why not bring the unborn child of a suicide victim to life and have her become just about instantly 22 years old and named Victoria (Barbara Carrera)?

Despite how smart Victoria is, she’s also quickly dying as her body is addicted to the immune suppressant drug methotrexate and has no issue killing Martha to keep her origins a secret. And oh yeah — making sweet love to the much older doctor.

The end of this movie is ridiculous and I love it. I mean, rapidly aging clones drinking dead fetus fluids, the doctor watching her kill his son and chasing after her only to learn that she’s having his baby? 70s science fiction carny BS at its finest.

It goes without saying: Barbara Carrera really must have been grown in a lab. I don’t know if that kind of perfection can come from the coupling of a man and woman. It must have some kind of science added to it.

This also has a party scene with Roddy McDowell and Joyce Brothers during which chess is the main source of fun, not drinking. Sure.

Somehow, due to Cine Artists Pictures going out of business this movie is in the public domain.

You can watch this on Tubi.

The Sizzlin’ Something Weird Summer Challenge 2024: Come with Me My Love (1976)

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Doris Wishman week (July 21 – 27) Doris made the loopiest of movies. A self-proclaimed prude who made nudist camp movies, her filmography is filled with contradictions. When she tried to be mean spirited with something like Bad Girls Go To Hell there was always an undercurrent of silliness and fun, but when she tried to be silly and fun in things like Keyholes Are For Peeping there was an underlying seediness and grime that couldn’t be wiped off. It’s hard not to love her!  

In 1926, Randolph (Jeffrey Hurst) catches his wife (Ursula Austin) making love to his best friend (Terry Austin). He kills them, then himself, and remains trapped in the apartment, his spirit unable to move on.

Fifty years later, Abby (also Ursula Austin) moves into the apartment, a place where sex is always happening, mostly between her neighbors Patrick (Robert Kerman, who would go to Italy and make Cannibal Holocaust), his unnamed blonde lover (Nancy Dare) and Lola (Vanessa Del Rio), who is the one who told Abby to move here. There’s also Tess Albertino (Annie Sprinkle).

Abby can’t sleep and magically, sleeping pills show up. She takes them and we see the sky, the wind picks up and Randolph emerges from the wallpaper to make love to her, which we see as Abby being thrown around the bed with no one else there. The problem, well besides the lack of consent in this scene, is that every man who has sex with Abby gets killed from here on our. There’s even a radio thrown into a bathtub which I love to no end. Anny deals with this by wandering through a blizzard before coming home to discover that she has a wedding ring stuck on her hand.

The credits say that this was directed by Luigi Manicottale — when has an American taken on an Italian name, that’s the exact reverse of how this works — but that’s really Doris Wishman. The ghost effects of this movie, the strange snowy park walking scene, the murder after murder without stopping the nonstop lovemaking — this is one strange movie. I have no idea who would be turned on by it and I don’t think Doris cared at all.

Annie Sprinkle recently posted about this movie on Instagram, saying “I was just interviewed for a documentary film about cult filmmaker, Doris Wishman. Amazingly I was in two of her movies almost 50 years ago. Satan Was A Lady and Come With My Love. I had not had a single acting lesson. (Still haven’t. ) I didn’t like acting. I liked the sekx scenes. When I thought about it, Doris was the first woman director I worked with. She was in her 60s and when we shot the dirty bits she would leave the room! The films are partly on YouTube. I was 20 years young and had very bad hair! Most everyone else in the film is dead now. I’m still here! Dori’s would be amazed I’m now still making films and am a Guggenheim Fellow even. Doris is gone but not forgotten.”

The effect of the man emerging from the wallpaper scares me.

You can get this from Vinegar Syndrome.

CBS LATE MOVIE MONTH: The Premonition (1976)

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EDITOR’S NOTE: The Premonition was on the CBS Late Movie on January 29, 1982 and January 19, 1983.

A foster mother has The Premonition: her new daughter’s unstable biological mother is going to come and take her away. It comes true, so what happens next? PS – it’s beyond the power of an exorcist in only the way that an exploitation movie poster can promise.

Originally released as part of Arrow Video’s American Horror Project, this film was once titled Turtle Heaven. I watched this movie because of the always dependable Richard Lynch (Bad Dreams, Invasion U.S.A.), who plays the carnival clown boyfriend of Andrea, whose daughter Janie (Danielle Brisebois, TV’s Archie Bunker’s Place) has been adopted by the Bennett family. Oh yeah — Jeff Corey (who would go from being blacklisted to becoming the premier acting coach in Hollywood) shows up as a cop.

Two mothers — connected by the young girl they love and see as their child, as well as a psychic bond — go to war. That’s my best explanation of this very 1970’s film. But back to Richard Lynch — did you know how he got his scarred looking appearance? The hard way. In 1967, high on drugs, he set himself on fire in Central Park, burning more than 70% of his body. But after a year of recovery, he started to act.

You can watch this on Tubi.

CBS LATE MOVIE MONTH: Dawn: Portrait of a Teenage Runaway (1976)

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EDITOR’S NOTE: Dawn: Portrait of a Teenage Runaway was on the CBS Late Movie on September 11, 1979 and July 10, 1980.

Director Randal Kleiser went from TV movies like this, The Gathering and The Boy in the Plastic Bubble to Grease, The Blue Lagoon, Flight of the Navigator, Big Top Pee-wee and more. This was written by Darlene Young, who went on to write Panic In Echo Park, Can You Hear the Laughter? The Story of Freddie Prinze, The Plutonium Incident, Little Darlings, Marilyn: The Untold Story, The People Across the Lake and more, as well as acting in the TV series Grimm and the movie Pig.

Eve Plumb stars as Dawn, a role that ended up angering Brady Bunch fans when she took this instead of doing the Brady Bunch Variety Hour, which replaced her with Geri Reischl as Jan. Reischl was also in Brotherhood of Satan and I Dismember Mama. She was to play Blair Warner on The Facts of Life, but had a contract with General Mills playing Dorothy of The Wizard of Oz in commercials for Crispy Wheats-n-Raisins.

Plumb plays Dawn Wetherby, a runaway who has come to Hollywood and is instantly attacked and mugged. She soon meets sex worker Frankie Lee (Marguerite DeLain) and fellow runaway Alexander (Leigh McCloskey, Inferno) before working for a pimp named Swan (Bo Hopkins). TV watchers had to be shocked, as the first john she has — and loses her virginity to, saying  “I felt nothing—just stared at the ceiling and became a woman.” — is played by Patty Duke’s TV dad William Schallert.

You can blame her mother for not having a husband, I guess, or maybe not treating her well. It’s all very moralistic, as you would imagine — unlike a movie like Angel, in which yes, sex work is dangerous but you get to hang out with Rory Calhoun and Susan Tyrrell — but this was one of the first times that TV would tackle this hot topic. One imagines a young Bret Michaels was taking notes — “She stepped off the bus out into the city streets / Just a small town girl with her whole life / Packed in a suitcase by her feet” — in his Butler, PA living room.

This was so popular that a sequel — Alexander: the Other Side of Dawn — came out a few years later. I didn’t like Alexander too much in this, as he’s such a downer. Then again, Bo Hopkins is a lunatic and somehow he’s able to get his hooks into Dawn instead of this guy, but we learn in the sequel that Alexander has dealt with some issues, like a famous football star who pays him to pose.

You can watch this on YouTube.

CBS LATE MOVIE MONTH: Nightmare in Badham County (1976)

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EDITOR’S NOTE: Nightmare In Badham County was on the CBS Late Movie on February 18 and October 18, 1983 and February 8, 1985.

This was a made-for-TV movie but was released in theaters internationally with extended footage and nudity. It was so popular in China that actress Deborah Raffin became the first Western actress to make a promotional tour of the country and became an unofficial ambassador helping China make deals with Hollywood.

Raffin plays Cathy Phillips, who is driving across the country with her friend Diane Emery (Lynne Moody), ends up on the wrong end of the law after turning down the intentions of Sheriff Slim Danen (Chuck Connors), who puts them in jail and assaults Diane. This being a small Southern town, our heroines get sent to a work camp run by Superintendant Dancer (Robert Reed) and his guards, Dulcie, Smitty (Lana Wood) and Greer (Tina Louise).

Not everyone is going to make it out alive in this John Llewellyn Moxey — the man who made just about every great TV movie — film. Its writer, Jo Helms, also wrote the scripts for Play Misty for Me and The Girl in Lovers Lane.

This is another movie that reminds me I don’t go on vacation and talk to police officers too long. The saddest thing about this movie is that for all the attention it paid to having the women be in segregated jails, the actors all had to stay in segregated hotels while making this movie.

CBS LATE MOVIE MONTH: The Loneliest Runner (1976)

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EDITOR’S NOTE: The Loneliest Runner was on the CBS Late Movie on August 12 and December 15, 1987.

This was written, produced and directed by Michael Landon, who really was the loneliest runner. That’s because he wet his bed until he was 14 and his mother hung his sheets out to dry so that all the neighborhood kids could see that he couldn’t sleep a night without pissing himself.

During his childhood, Landon had to deal with his mother threatening suicide. On a family beach vacation, she tried to drown herself, but he rescued her. Later, his mother acted as if nothing happened, and the stress of this led to him bedwetting even more.

Before he tore his shoulder, Landon wanted to be a javelin thrower. Instead, he became a teenage werewolf, a cowboy, a settler and an angel on the road.

John Curtis (Lance Kerwin) can’t sleep a night without getting the bed soaked and not from wet dreams. No, he urinates the sack nightly and runs to a local laundromat and washes the sheets when his parents are asleep. He also stays up all night during sleepovers. You would too if you had parents like Arnold (Brian Keith) and Alice (DeAnn Mears). She yells at both of them for being less than men and in response, Arnold slaps his son around. This makes him leak the sheets even more.

A young girl, Nancy Rizzi (Melissa Sue Anderson) shows interest, but all John can think about is running home to get those stained sheets down every day. However, his mother’s horrible parenting skills and his father’s inability to reveal that he also was a bedwetter means that he learns how to run fast. Really fast. He makes it to the Olympics, his father tells his mother to shut up and he gets the girl.

This movie inspired “Peanut Butter, Eggs, and Dice,” an episode of Mr. Show in which “The Bob Lamonta Story” is told.

Despite the earnestness of this film, it’s heart is in the right place. It was a staple of made for TV movies and it made me worry every night when I went to bed, sure that I’d be peeing everywhere. When I woke up and the bed was dry, I thanked Michael Landon.

You can watch this on YouTube.

CBS LATE MOVIE MONTH: Won Ton Ton: The Dog Who Saved Hollywood (1976)

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EDITOR’S NOTE: Won Ton Ton: The Dog Who Saved Hollywood was on the CBS Late Movie on September 4, 1981.

We live in a magical reality, the kind of place where Michael Winner, the same man who made some of the roughest films ever — Death Wish, Death Wish 2, Death Wish 3, The Mechanic, The Sentinel — made this movie that’s a kind of, sort of biography of Hollywood star dog Rin Tin Tin.

It was originally called Won Ton Ton, the Dog Who Saved Warner Bros. before Paramount bought the film and, well, the movie had to change its name, right?

Estie Del Ruth (Madeline Kahn) has made her way to Hollywood, followed by a dog named Won Ton Ton. While she has dreams of being a star — and a director who continually and unsuccessfully pitches movies that will be made many years later named Grayson Potchuck (Bruce Dern) tries to help — the truth is that the dog has all the talent.

This is less a film than a collection of vignettes about the Golden Age of Hollywood, such as Ron Leibman’s effeminate take on Rudolph Valentino and Art Carney, Phil Silvers and Teri Garr as players in the tale of Estie and Won Ton Ton.

The draw for me — beyond how strange it is that Winner directed this comedy misfire — is the huge cast of Hollywood legends, many of whom made this movie their final role. Here are as many as I could remember:

Dorothy Lamour: One-time star of the Hope and Crosby Road movies, she shows up here as a visiting film star.

Joan Blondell: Often cast as a gold digger, Blondell’s career stretched back to vaudeville. She’d appear in two more movies after this: The Champ and Grease.

Virginia Mayo: Warner Brothers’ biggest box-office money-maker in the late 1940s, Mayo continued acting until 1997. She was one of the first actresses to be awarded a star on the Walk of Fame.

Henny Youngman: The rapid-fire standup who would always say, “Take my wife…please.”

Rory Calhoun: Readers of this site will definitely know Calhoun, as he reinvented himself in the 80’s, appearing in genre films like Motel Hell, Hell Comes to Frogtown and the first two Angel films.

Aldo Ray: Much like Calhoun, Ray appeared in just about every genre film he could in the later part of his career. Shock ‘Em Dead, Human Experiments, The Glove, Don’t Go Near the Park, Haunts…I can and will go on.

Nancy Walker: This star of Rhoda would go on to direct an even bigger bomb than this: Can’t Stop the Music, the unreal story of the Village People.

Ethel Merman: Playing Hedda Parsons here, Merman was considered the First Lady of musical comedy.

Rhonda Fleming: Her name in this movie is Rhoda Flaming, which is…par for the course of this film. She was known as the Queen of Technicolor for how well she filmed.

Dean Stockwell: If you only know him from Quantum Leap, I’d recommend you check out his roles in To Live and Die in L.A. and Married to the Mob.

Tab Hunter: Known for his clean-cut, boy next door looks, his later years are marked by interesting turns, such as playing Mary Hartman’s dad on the spin-off Forever Fernwood and appearing with Divine in Polyester (1981) and Paul Bartel’s Lust in the Dust.

Dick Haymes: This big band vocalist sang in the session where Bing Crosby and The Andrews Sisters recorded both “There’s No Business Like Show Business” and “Anything You Can Do (I Can Do Better).”

Robert Alda: Yes, he’s Alan’s dad. But you knew that. And you also knew that he played Father Michael in Mario Bava’s House of Exorcism.

Victor Mature: This would be the actor’s last major role; he also shows up in a cameo at the end of Winner’s film Firepower.

Edgar Bergen: As Professor Quicksand, this is one of his few roles not holding one of his trademark partners like Charlie McCarthy or Mortimer Snerd. He’s also in The Phynx, which still blows my mind.

Henry Wilcoxon: You may not know that he was very involved with the films of Cecil B. DeMille, but you do know him as the priest caught in a rainstorm in Caddyshack.

Yvonne DeCarlo: In 1950, the Camera Club of America voted her “Sexnicolor Queen of the Screen.” You know those guys — the pre-Internet creeps that’d hire women to pose for them as they stood around en masse. DeCarlo is better known as Lily Munster, she also appears in the kind of movies that this creep enjoys, namely Satan’s Cheerleaders, Silent Scream, Play Dead, Guyana: Cult of the Damned, American Gothic and Mirror, Mirror.

There are literally dozens and dozens of stars here, so get ready…

Edward Le Veque (the last surviving member of The Keystone Kops); William Benedict (Whitey of The Bowery Boys); Huntz Hall of The Dead End Kids; silent stars Carmel Myers, Dorothy Gulliver, Maytag repairman Jesse White; comedians Jack Carter and Shecky Greene; Marilyn Monroe rival Barbara Nichols; Variety columnist Army Archerd; Fernando Lamas; Zsa Zsa Gabor; Cyd Charisse, whose legs were once insured for $5 million dollars; Doodles Weaver (who also shows up in plenty of insane movies like The Zodiac Killer); cowboy actor Pedro Gonzalez Gonzalez; Dick Van Dyke Show co-star Morey Amsterdam; Monroe/JFK scandal magnet Peter Lawford; Eddie Foy Jr.; Patricia Morison; The Adventures of Wild Bill Hickok star Guy Madison; John Carradine as a drunk (yes, I realize that this is an easy target; I also realize that I watch at least one movie with Carradine in it a day); Regis Toomey, who is also in another dog of a film C.H.O.M.P.S.; Ann Rutherford (Gone with the Wind); Milton Berle (once perhaps the most famous person in entertainment); Keye Luke (a founding member of the Screen Actors’ Guild as well as the original Brak on Space Ghost and Mr. Wing from Gremlins); Walter Pidgeon (he’d be in one more movie, the Mae West vehicle Sextette); character actors Phil Leeds and Cliff Norton as dogcatchers; Winnie the Pooh’s original voice Sterling Holloway; two of the Ritz brothers who were also in Blazing Stewardesses; Edward Ashley (Professor Sutherland from Waxwork); Fritz Feld (who is also in The Phynx); George Jessel; Ken Murray; Stepin Fetchit (considered to be the first African-American to have a successful acting career, now seen as an example of how Hollywood treated minorities); Tarzan actor Johnny Weissmuller; Louis Nye; Dennis Morgan; William Demarest (Uncle Charley from My Three Sons); Billy Barty who plays an assistant director; Ricardo Montalban; Jackie Coogan; Roy Rogers’ sidekick Andy Devine; Broderick Crawford (of his many movies, I’ll let on that Harlequin is one of my favorites); Richard Arlan; Jack La Rue; former pro wrestler “Iron” Mike Mazurki; as well as singers Dennis Day, Janet Blair, Jane Connell, Ann Miller, Rudy Vallee and Gloria DeHaven.

When Augustus von Schumacher attended the premiere — he was the dog who played the lead role — he walked in with Mae West. Now that’s how you become a star.

As for the movie — unless you’re someone like me that gets excited about cameos, you’re going to hate it.

The Sizzlin’ Something Weird Summer Challenge 2024: Fantasm (1976)

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Uschi Digard week (June 23 – 29) Digard is best known for her work with Russ Meyer but she became an SWV fan favorite for two gargantuan reasons, her charm and her prolific career. The Swiss actress fled to America in 1968 and began a long career filling the silver screen from corner to corner with her overflowing positive energy. Show the lady some respect and watch one of her movies.

This is not about the one with the silver balls, yet I remain obsessed about the idea that when people are fucking the Lady In Lavender in Phantasm, they’re fucking the Tall Man.

No, this is the adult movie from Down Under directed by the man that would one day make Psycho II, Richard Franklin. He used the name Richard Bruce, but it’s the same talented man who made Roadgames and Cloak and Dagger.

German sexologist Professor Jürgen Notafreud (John Bluthal) is here to explain to us how the female sexual mind works. To do so, we’re going to watch an anthology film of sexual hijinks, kind of like an Amicus movie but you know, with fucking.

There are many tales here, like the woman who is being pampered in a “Beauty Parlour,” a husband (William Margold) and wife (Maria Arnold, who is in the best titled of all Harry Novak’s movies, Wam Bam Thank You Spaceman) playing a “Card Game” where she takes on as many of his friends (Kirby Hall and Robert Savage) as she can (and then Wendy Cavanaugh and Helen O’Connell also come over), “Wearing The Pants” has a housewife (Gretchen Gayle, My Body Hungers) do some forced feminization and sodomy on a man (Con Covert) who steals her clothing and “Nightmare Alley,” which has Rene Bond being assaulted by Al Williams until she likes it.

Umm…it was 1976? No, I can’t defend it.

At least this recovers with “The Girls,” as Uschi Digard — listed as Super Girl, as if she was coming in from a Russ Meyer movie — and Mara Lutra engaging in some sapphic screentime. Then, the film’s most famous moment has John Holmes rise from the water nude — yes, it’s still intimidating — and eat “Fruit Salad” off of Maria Welton.

Fantasm seems to be about displaying taboos, like how Candy Samples lusts for her son (Gene Poe) in “Mother’s Darling” and a black exotic dancer (Shayne) performs for Richard Partlow, Paul Wyman and Sam Wyman. Or “After School,” where young Roxanne Brewer (Sexual Kung Fu in Hong Kong and Dr. Dildo’s Secret; spoiler warning; the doctor is a dildo) dances for her teacher (Al Ward) until he has a heart attack. Guess that test is cancelled tomorrow.

Finally, in the scene that you knew I’d like most, a “Blood Orgy” finds Serena get sacrificed by a Satanic cult, but not before making love to their priest (Clement von Franckenstein, whose father Sir George Franckenstein was the Austrian Ambassador to the Court of St. James).

It’s like Faces of Death but, you know, about boinking.

Also: John Holmes’ name is Neptune and at one point, it seems like his underwater lover is using his massive membrum virile as a snorkel.

I would assume that Brockton O’Toole got his inspiration from this movie. And if you got that, you definitely walked through some video store curtains.

The Sizzlin’ Something Weird Summer Challenge 2024: C.B. Hustlers (1976)

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Uschi Digard week (June 23 – 29) Digard is best known for her work with Russ Meyer but she became an SWV fan favorite for two gargantuan reasons, her charm and her prolific career. The Swiss actress fled to America in 1968 and began a long career filling the silver screen from corner to corner with her overflowing positive energy. Show the lady some respect and watch one of her movies.

Stu Seagall created hyper-realistic training for military personnel and also directed Insatiable with Marilyn Chambers. How can you top that? He was the executive producer for Silk Stalkings, Renegade and the third Beastmaster movie. And more? He directed, wrote and produced Drive-In Massacre, which this was shot back-to-back with.

He also directed this movie, which was written by John Alderman, John F. Goff and Martin Gatsby. It’s about a couple named Dancer (John Alderman) and Scuzz (Jacqueline Giroux) who are the pimps for three women known as the C.B. Hustlers, who are played by Janus Blythe (Ruby from The Hills Have Eyes), Catherine Barkley and — most importantly — Uschi Digard, billed as Elke Vann. They always tell people in public that the girls are their daughters, but the truth is that they collect 40% of their $25 fee for each sex act, which they set up with C.B. radios.

In C.B. terms, they used to call the areas where sex workers would line up as pickle park, party row or the back row.

Sheriff Elrod P. Ramsey (Bruce Kimball) wants to bust the girls, so he brings on newspaper men Boots Clayborn (John F. Goff) and Mountain Dean (Richard Kennedy) to track them down. Of course, Boots falls for one of the girls and ends up helping them stay ahead of the fuzz. Or as C.B. users would say, bears driving bubble gum machines. Or a smokey. Or, if they’re women, Mama Bears.

It’s also a vansploitation movie! The Hot Box 1 and Hot Box 2 vans were made by Custom Touch of Van Nuys, California.

There’s one major reason — well, two — to watch this and that’s Uschi Digard, whose lovemaking scene is filmed as if you are under her. It’s worth sitting through all the bad country music, long walking scenes and the dumb plot, because I often wonder if God exists and upon rewatching this scene more than once, I can confirm that the answer is affirmative.