The last theatrical film of Ralph Nelson (Charly, Lillies of the Field), the screenplay for this film came from the author of the book that it’s based on, Alice Childress. It’s all about teenager Benjie (Larry B. Scott), who goes from marijuana to heroin and nearly dropping not just out of school, but life itself. Can his family — mother Sweets (Cicely Tyson), grandmother Mrs. Bell (Helen Martin) and replacement father figure Butler (Paul Winfield) — save him?

This is a movie that tries so much, presenting a story about drug use, a story about black men losing their fathers, about how black men and the education system don’t mix well, about a young black couple trying to make things work and build a family, all within one story that really wants to do well but keeps trying, as I said, too much in too little time.

That said, the cast is beyond likable and if this were a series, this could have adjusted and been all of those things. It’s preachy, sure, but it has the right message from a heart that is in the proper place.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Also known as The Town That Cried Terror, Night Hunter,  Assault in Paradise and Maniac*, this was directed by Richard Compton (Angels Die Hard, Macon County Line, tons of episodic TV) and written by John C. Broderick (who wrote and directed The Warrior and the Sorceress; well, kind of…read my interview with William Stout) and Ronald Silkosky (The Dunwich Horror).

The town of Paradise is run by the rich William Whitaker (Stuart Whitman). He’s being targeted by a Native American named Victor (Paul Koslo), who starts killing people and demands a million. If he’s not paid, more will die. Instead of relying on the police, Whitaker pays Nick McCormick (Oliver Reed) to end his problems.

Seeing as how the desert is an area he doesn’t know, Nick hires a tracker (Jim Mitchum). Now, both these two are supposed to be efficient killers, yet they keep getting lost and Nick spends most of his time drinking — Oliver Reed, playing not against character — and getting down with a TV reporter named Cindy (Deborah Raffin).

Somehow, this movie also has an end song by The Byrds’ Roger McGuinn and Patrick Ferrell, as well as a score by jazz musician Don Ellis, who also did the score for Ruby, The French Connection and Kansas City Bomber.

It’s kind of a slasher, kind of Native Americansploitation, kind of a socially aware movie and also, totally not because Paul Koslo is a white guy with blonde hair playing a Native American.

*See all the ads in this article at the essential Temple of Schlock. 1977’s Maniac! release has a different opening scene by Miller Drake and Joel Rapp where a killer in a clown mask shoots a young couple in a convertible Son of Sam style.

An adaptation of the 1973 musical A Little Night Music, which was based on Ingmar Bergman’s Smiles of a Summer Night, this seems like an odd film for New World to release. It was directed by Harold Prince, who spent most of his career directing for the stage.

Despite negative reviews, Stephen Sondheim’s music and lyrics for the film — the “Night Waltz” theme and a new version of “The Glamorous Life” — have been added to many of the later productions of this musical when it’s performed on stage.

Widower Frederich Egerman (Len Cariou) is married to a much younger second wife Anne (Lesley-Anne Down) who has kept her virginity for the first year of their time living under one roof. His son Erich (Christopher Guard) may be studying to be a priest, but he lusts after his stepmother while Frederich falls again for an old lover, actress Desiree Armfeldt (Elizabeth taylor), which upsets his young bride.

As for Desiree, her mother Madame Armfeldt (Hermione Gingold) is raising her daughter’s teenager Fredericka (Chloe Franks) and as you can guess, she just may be the daughter of Frederich. All manner of hijinks occur — as much as attempted suicide and Russian roulette can be hijinks — and all ends happily. And hey — Diana Rigg is in it!

That’s really Liz singing in this. I didn’t think so, but then I found out that yes, she’s really singing.

Man, only Roger Corman could get an Elizabeth Taylor musical on this site.

The third sequel to Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS, this film finds Ilsa — didn’t she die a few times along the way? — changing sides from the Third Reich to the USSR as she runs Siberian Gulag 14, where she mentally and physically decimates men.

When Stalin dies, Ilsa burns the camp to the ground leaving no one alive except for Andrei Chikurin, who escapes and vows to get revenge. Twenty years later, he learns that Isla now runs a brothel in Canada when the Russian hockey team plays several games there.

According to the amazing Canuxploitation, Ilsa is actually a Canadian creation. When Lee Frost and David F. Friedman made big money with Love Camp 7 in Canada, Cinepix’s Andr Link and John Dunning wrote the script for Ilsa and got Friedman on board as a producer. Despite being the man who hired Dyanne Thorne for the role, issues with Cinepix and producer Don Carmody would have Friedman disown the movie.

Amazingly, this was produced by Ivan Reitman (using the name Julian Parnell).

This movie has a Siberian tiger named Sasha that Ilsa feeds men to, as well as many icy and watery graves and a scene where men arm wrestle over a running chainsaw. And each night, the men wrestle one another while a nude Ilsa challenges them to be the only two to come to her room where she’s definitely ahead of the adult film curve and very into DP (and I thought that was popularized by Ginger Lynn). She also has a mad scientist named Leve who has figured out ways to use photos and music to get into people’s brains.

Andrei Chikurin (Michel Morin) is the one man that she can’t break. He’s the one who killed her tiger and escaped the gulag and now, as the manager of the Russian hockey team, he somehow finds the one Montreal bordello called Aphrodite that Ilsa is the boss of. As he sits in the waiting room, her men take him and she tries to break him again — and make love to him, of course — before he’s freed by the Russian mafia and all manner of near Eurospy wildness goes down.

Director Jean LaFleur also made The Mystery of the Million Dollar Hockey Puck which has a lot of footage that was taken for this movie. It’s in no way as insane as the other Ilsa films — I mean, they have to contend with Jess Franco’s insane Ilsa, The Wicked Warden — but there’s lots of silly fun to be had. There’s also the ending, where Ilsa is left in the midst of nowhere, left with just her money to burn to stay alive.

EDITOR’S NOTE: You can read another take on this movie here.

Also released as Split-Second Smokey, this movie is about two cops — Ed (Edward Abrahms, the art director of the movie) and Smokey (Jack Vacek, who directed and wrote this; he also did the same for Deadly Addiction) — making extra money repossessing cars for George Daniels (George Cole) and Mick (Mick Brennan) before they learn that they are actually involved in a car theft ring.

Smokey’s girl Heidi (Heidi Schubert) just wants him to start being a normal person not obsessed with cars and racing. She ends up dumping him and he finds a new girl, Jordan (Patrice Schubert, is Heidi’s sister and yeah, that’s kind of weird, right? She’s also Vacek’s wife).

There’s a big crossover with H.B. Halicki’s car movies, as Vacek and cinematographer Tony Syslo worked for him, as well as Cole and Abrahms appearing in several Halicki movies. This has the same ramshackle feel — and I mean that in the best way, read that as “it has heart” — as those movies, with the L.A. River concrete structures that you’ll know from Terminator being used as scenery for chase after chase.

How close is this to Gone In Sixty Seconds? The black 1977 Cadillac Coupe DeVille in this movie has a Ronald Moran Cadillac license plate. That’s the same car dealer shown from Halicki’s movie.

You can watch this on Tubi.

In the midst of a worldwide famine — brought on by global cooling, not warming — farmer Grant Franklin (Clint Walker) and his family are some of the few to have food, thanks to hydroponics. Yeah, it was 1977.

The drama starts when cattle thief Mort Logan (Nehemiah Persoff) steals the family’s last cow from daughter Susan (Kim Cattrall), which causes Grant’s son Michael (Geraint Wyn Davies) to join the militia that’s been fighting back. Then, Charles Ennis (David Brown) and his father (Tim Whelan) come from Toronto to the country, begging the Franklin family for produce for his sick sister (Nuala Fitzgerald). When the militia finds the food, they think he stole it and Ennis’ father dies of a heart attack. This all ends up with a battle at Susan’s wedding, where Grant’s wife (Dawn Greenhalgh) and Susan’s groom are both murdered. But hey — there are only 27 days of food left for the whole world.

Deadly Harvest is a downer, as you can tell, but it’s a different end of the world film. The combat is all from frustration and pain; this is no fun Mad Max world. It’s the type of movie that has a credit for scientific consultation by City Green Hydroponics.

Director Timothy Bond also made the My Pet Monster movie, along with episodes of Friday the 13th: The Series, The Hitchhiker, Goosebumps and Animorphs. Writer Martin Lager also wrote The Shape of Things To Come and the TV series The Starlost.

Based on the novel I Never Promised You a Rose Garden by Joanne Greenberg, this was directed by Anthony Page (Absolution, Chernobyl: The Final Warning) and written by Gavin Lambert and Lewis John Carlino (Where Have All the People Gone?, The Mechanic).

It stars Kathleen Quinlan as Deborah Blake, a borderline schizophrenic who lives in a world of fantasy that is rudely intruded upon when she ends up in a brutal institution. Luckily, she’s saved by Dr. Fried (Bibi Andersson), who helps her learn what’s real and what isn’t.

After One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest was a success, Roger Corman was able to get this made. All of the Jewish content was removed, including the anti-Semetic abuse that the protagonist endures. How did Greenberg feel about that? She said that the Jewish moments left the producers “terrified” and the way that mental illness was treated “stank on ice.” Of the actors, only Andersson contacted her to learn the character and she claimed that the producers had told her that the author was “hopelessly insane.” She’d know, as the novel was based on her life.

One of the most expensive New World Pictures, this was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay and won two Golden Globe nominations for Best Actress for Quinlan and Best Picture.

This movie also has Dennis Quaid, Susan Tyrell, Lorraine Gary (Ellen Brodie!), Martin Bartlett, Ben Piazza and Sylvia Sidney in the cast. I want to know more about the deleted scenes, as Barbara Steele was in those. And when the movie shows scenes in Blake’s imagination — The Kingdom of Yr — the warriors ‘Anterrabae’ and ‘Lactameaon are Robert Viharo and Jeff Conaway.

Directed, written and produced by Larry Savadove (the executive producer of In Search of Ancient Mysteries, The Outer Space Connection and In Search of Ancient Astronauts and the writer and director of the UFO religion film Contact), Catastrophe is similar to the Sunn Classics films that were a big deal in the 70s. If you wonder what they’re like, just watch any of the UFO, cryptozoological or conspiracy shows that are all over basic cable today as Sunn walked so they could run.

Back. in 1977, you couldn’t pick the show you wanted to watch. So if you wanted a movie filled with disasters, you had to head to the theater. This delivers everything from the Hindenburg and the Xenia, Ohio tornado to Hurricane Camille. the Great Depression Dust Bowl, the Joelma fire in Brazil, Mount Etna erupting, the sinking of the SS Andrea Doria and accidents at the Indianapolis 500 all in one burst of death and horror, narrated by William Conrad.

It’s not perfect — when discussing the Xenia Tornado, Conrad recites the poem “Who Has Seen the Wind?” and claims that it’s by Robert Louis Stevenson. It’s not. It was written by Christina Rossetti. That said, today you’d just watch whole series about these things. But in 1977, we had this. It’s kind of a mondo, except it doesn’t have racist journeys into seeing native tribes or tries to shock you with sex. Mondo kind of makes a move from world travelogue to disasters to outright death by the VHS era, as Faces of Death faked out the world.