Growing up, the Saint Francis Hospital would always send people with mental issues to the fifth floor. I’ve had certain family members who would have semi-regular vacations to the fifth floor. It got to the point that whenever someone would discuss whether or not someone was acting strangely, theyd say, “Well, they’re on the fifth floor.”
This was going to be part of slasher month, except that it’s in no way a slasher. Of course, the poster work and other marketing makes it seem that way. It’s not. It’s much stranger.
Kelly McIntyre (Dianne Hull, cryonics enthusiast and an actress in Christmas Evil) is a disco dancer who gets dosed, probably by her boyfriend. This brings her to the fifth floor fo Cedar Springs Hospital, where her boyfriend refuses to help her, accusing her of being suicidal.
Kelly’s attractive, which means that she soon becomes the target of Carl the orderly. He’s played by Bo Hopkins, who I have had the fortune of watching several films with him in them of late. Here he’s out of control, a non-stop erection determined to ruin everyone’s life.
This movie is packed with faces you’ll remember, like Don Johnson’s ex-girlfriend and Warhol movie star Patti D’Arbanville, Cathey Paine (Helter Skelter), horror icons Michael Berryman and Robery Englund, Sharon Farrell (It’s Alive), Anthony James (the chauffer from Burnt Offerings), Julie Adams Dennis Hopper’s The Last Movie and The Creature From the Black Lagoon), Mel Ferrer, John David Carson (Creature from Black Lake), Earl Boen (the only actor other than Arnold Schwarzenegger to appear in the first three Terminator films), Alice Nunn (Large Marge!), rock and roll photographer Chuck Boyd (who is also in the sexploitation film Dr. Minx and The Specialist, both from the same director of this movie), Machine Gun Kelly (who was the announcer in UHF), disco singer Patti Brooks (whose song “After Dark” was on the soundtrack of Thank God It’s Friday! and recorded two duets with Dan Aykroyd for Dr. Detroit), Milt Kogan (Barney Miller), 1961 Miss Universe Marlene Schmidt (who is in nearly every movie this director did) and Tracey Walter. Yes, Bob the Goon from Batman.
This star-studded journey into mental illness comes straight out of the mind of Howard Avedis, who brought us all manner of literally insane movies like Mortuary and They’re Playing With Fire, two movies that I recommend highly. He knows how to take a salacious topic and make it even smuttier, which I always adore. Well done, Howard (or Hikmet).
It might seem like a TV movie for a bit, then there’s full frontal nudity and you’ll feel safe, like a warm straitjacket has been put on you, allowing you to just lie back and enjoy the magical exploitation within.
DAY 27. SPECIAL PRESENTATIONS: Made for TV movies from the ’70s, classic era of the bronze screen.
John Carpenter was hired by Warner Bros in 1976 to write a script based on the true story of a woman who had been spied on inside her Chicago apartment. The script, High Rise, ended up become a TV movie that Caroenter was also given the chance to direct.
“I thought it was a really, really good idea,” said Carpenter. “So I had my first experience with television. And my first union experience. I got into the Director’s Guild through that. I had a real good time on it, I have to tell you. I met my wife.”
This eighteen-day shoot allowed Carpenter to test many of the techniques that he’d use weeks later when he started work on Halloween.
Originally airing on November 29, 1978 on NBC, this movie concerns Leigh Michaels (Lauren Hutton), who has moved to Los Angeles to escape New York City. As she begins her new career at television startion KJHC with new friend Sophie (Barbeau) and a relationship with college professor Paul Winkless (David Birney, who went on to be quite the reader of audio books).
However, she’s soon dealing with phone calls and strange gifts from Excursions Unlimited. She calls the police, but there’s nothing she can do except wait for the voyeur to come to her.
Fans ofHalloween take note: Charlie Cyphers shows up as a cop.
Shout! Factory released this on blu ray last year, replacing the four movie multipack that I used to watch this on, where it sat alongside Eyes of a Stranger, Deadly Friend and The Hand.
Day 16 Rock ‘n’ Roll Miscreants: Give some screen time to the punks and/or metal heads(and Lane Caudell gives us a two-fer!)
The horror-centric webzine Bloody Disgusting recently posted a story about a gritty, low-budgeted horror film, Getaway Girls (2020), written and directed by Toran Caudell who, as a teen, found success as an actor on the WB Network and as an animated voice artist for the Disney and Nickelodeon Networks. While this writer never watched any of his TV series, I was intrigued to hear a child actor beat the so called “child actor curse” and continued to flourish in the business as an adult. Upon a further Internet-investigation of the film, it’s discovered that Toran Caudell is the son of actor-musician Lane Caudell, he the star of two of the coolest, fondly remembered films of this writer’s ‘80s UHF-TV and video store, rock ‘n’ roll youth: Goodbye, Franklin High and Hanging on a Star.
Thanks to Lane’s son, it marks the first time that old, familiar face from my youth has acted in front of the camera since eschewing the acting world after the 1982-1983 season of the NBC-TV U.S daytime serial, Days of Our Lives. (I know. I know. Yes, I watched DOOL. For reasons lost in the corners of my mind, somehow my sister negotiated “TV rights” after school, so I was stuck watching DOOL andGeneral Hospital. Well, not really. When Diane, your sister’s very cute friend from school, plants herself in front of your TV to watch soap operas . . . teen hormones must make sacrifices. Then Jill Swanson came along. Have mercy!)
A few days after discovering the Bloody Disgusting article, a couch-grazing binge of a few episodes of A&E’s Hoarders inspired a deep dive into the long-forgotten spare bedroom and hallway closets for a belated (and “adult”), much-needed spring cleaning — closets which also hold a now lazily misfiled vinyl music and video tape collection. That domesticated archeological dig uncovered long-forgotten vinyl copies of Lane’s two MCA albums: Hanging on Star and Midnight Hunter, and (which I didn’t even know I did have in the first place) his lone 1975 album with Skyband for RCA.
Dude, it’s a sign. Toran of Malveel is recruiting you for a quest beyond the sun’s horizon. Sharpen your broadsword. Mount ye steed and ride, R.D!
As with Rick Springfield (of the rock bomb Hard to Hold) and Kim Milford (the obscure TV rocker, Song of the Succubus) before him, with Lane’s musical endeavors not bearing financial or chart fruits, he took up acting as a sideline to make financial ends meet. That’s when he met filmmaker Mike MacFarland who served as the Executive Producer on what was to become an exploitation teen-horror film classic: Satan’s Cheerleaders (1977) and Lane, in a support role, made his acting debut. And while Lane didn’t earn a role on TV’s Battlestar Galactica (Rick Springfield got the role), Lane scored the lead role in the early ‘90s TV/foreign theatrical, Star Wars-cum-Conan the Barbarian sci-fi romper, Archer: Fugitive from the Empire.
Under the managerial wing of Cal-Am Productions — which went out of business in a blaze of glory with the 1978 Drive-In slasher and later UK Section 2 Video Nasty (see the B&S Movies’ Section 2 List), The Toolbox Murders(see B&S Movies Exploring: Slahser Remakes List) — and with Mike MacFarland in the director’s chair, Lane made his debut as a leading man in the baseball comedy-drama, Goodbye, Franklin High, and the rock ‘n’ roll follow up, Hanging on a Star. Both films were backed by the Great Lion of Hollywood: MGM Studios.
On the DVD commentary for Satan’s Cheerleaders, director Greydon Clark stated Mike MacFarland offered an additional $25,000 to the production for a producer credit and if Clark would use Lane Caudell in a role, who he was considering for a lead in a film he would direct, which became Goodbye, Franklin High. The extra money improved the film’s production values, allowing Clark to sign a SAG contract and hire recognized SAG actors in John Carradine (Revenge, the sequel to Blood Cult — part of B&S Movies’ 2019 Halloween “Slasher Month,” look for it — andEvils of the Night), Yvonne deCarlo (The Silent Scream, Sam’s “Slasher” review is on the way!), and John Ireland (Incubus and The House of Seven Corpses), along with Charlie Chaplin’s Tony Award-winning acting son, Sydney, and noted TV character actor, Jack Kruschen.
While there are two songs, “One for All and All for One” and “Who You Gonna Love Tonight,” by a female-fronted disco concern known as Sonoma in Satan’s Cheerleaders, it is unknown if Caudell was involved with the production of those songs. Greydon Clark makes no mention of the songs in his commentary or if Caudell assisted on the soundtrack. And while Caudell provided several songs to Goodbye, Franklin High, no official soundtrack or promotional 45-rpm singles were released to radio or retail.
Sadly, today’s nostalgic film critics lump Goodbye, Franklin High with the glut of teen exploitation flicks (that’s a B&S Movies’ Week unto itself, eh, Sam?) haunting drive-Ins in the ‘70s, such as The Pom Pom Girls (1976), The Van (1977), Malibu Beach (1978), and Swap Meet, Van Nuys Blvd., H.O.T.S, and Gas Pump Girls (all 1979). In reality, Goodbye, Franklin High lacks any of those films’ American Graffiti-inspired T&A foolishness to tell a tale with a softer, ABC Afterschool Special-styled storyline (ah, ‘70s kids’ television!) about a young man facing his future: go to college or play pro-ball? The film actually has more in common with one of Sam Elliot’s earliest dramatic film rolls (Road House, Ghost Rider), Lifeguard (1978; search for that incredible film!), itself a coming-of-age drama of dealing with one’s future, than with any of the T&A brethren released during the same period.
Then, Cal-Am Productions (seriously, The Toolbox Murders guys!) in conjunction with MCA Records and MGM Studios, customized a project that would spotlight not only Lane’s acting chops, but his music abilities as well. That film was later to become a U.S UHF-TV and video store classic, Hanging on a Star, a comedic chronicle of “The Jeff Martin Band,” a hot rock band on their way up the charts. In a teen-idol doppelganger: Leif Garrett also starred in a teen drive-In rock flick of his own, Thunder Alley (an Option 3: 2019 Scarecrow Psychotronic Challenge: Day 16 entry!), which made the rounds on cable, UHF-TV, and video store shelves in the ‘80s. Rick Springfield eventually starred in his own, similar rock flick: the critically lambasted Hard to Hold.
Six years after issuing his first solo single in 1972, Lane finally released his first solo album proper: Hanging on a Star. Although several songs from the album also appeared in its companion film, the album was not marketed as an official soundtrack. Sadly, while a well-devised dual marketing plan, neither the album nor the film lit up the charts or box office. The film did find a subsequent, enthusiastic audience on U.S cable television, which led to Lane’s fans — including this writer — to posthumously purchasing copies of the album in the used record store aftermarket — just like we did with Matt Dillion’s film debut, Over the Edge; it’s how we discovered Cheap Trick, Van Halen, the Cars, and the Ramones (and get that Little Feat crap the hell out of here!).
Lane would go onto receive his first starring TV role alongside Jerry Reed in 1979’s Good ‘Ol Boys, a TV movie that served as a series pilot to capitalize on Reed’s then massive popularity stemming from his work on Smokey and the Bandit — and to catch a little nip of that The Dukes of Hazzard moonshine madness. Lane’s next NBC pilot was starring alongside U.S television mainstay William Conrad, loved by audiences for his work as Detective Joe Cannon in Cannon. A cross between Conrad’s two famed TV characters (the other from his later hit series, Jack and the Fatman), the 1980 series would have starred Conrad as ex-L.A police lieutenant, Bill Battles, who takes a job at Hawaii State University as the head of its Campus Police Unit — and as an assistant football coach. Lane, co-starring as the team’s quarterback, would have been the crime-solving side kick in, Battles.
However, courtesy of the success of Star Wars igniting a renewed interest in science fiction and old fashioned sword ‘n’ sorcery action-fantasies, Universal and NBC-TV developed Archer: Fugitive from the Empire, which starred Lane as a prince on a distant planet accused of murdering his father-king; equipped with a magic ‘n’ deadly crossbow, he teamed up with Belinda Bauer (schwing!) as his Princess Leia/Red Sonja for a series of weekly adventures. Known under several other titles in its overseas theatrical distribution, Archer made it to series, but was too costly to produce to justify against its low ratings in the U.S marketplace.
Continuing his relationship with the NBC-TV family, Lane ended his acting career with a one-season recurring role on the highly-rated U.S daytime drama, The Days of Our Lives. Between his work on U.S daytime television and making his return to the big screen in his son Toran’s horror film, Getaway Girls, he became a mover and shaker as a songwriter, music publisher, and session musician in the country music marketplace.
Sadly, Hanging on Star and Goodbye, Franklin High — like this writer’s two cherished Kim Milford rock movies, Song of the Succubus and Rock-a-Die Baby (a Halloween 2019 “Slasher Month” entry, look for it!), haven’t been in reruns on U.S television UHF stations in close to 40 years.
Hanging on a Star made it to VHS tape. In all the years of this writer haunting video stores and the video cut out bins of libraries and vintage vinyl outlets, an official VHS version of Goodbye, Franklin High has yet to appear — although taped-from-broadcast TV clips of the film have appeared on video sharing sites. This writer once owned two used copies of Hanging on a Star: one tape swelled up from moisture and molded-out; the tape of its replacement shredded into pieces inside the VCR. A home-taped version of Goodbye, Franklin High — sandwiched between Wes Craven’s Chiller (starring Michael Beck of The Warriors), Circle of Iron (starring David Carradine and Jeff Cooper), and Over the Edge (starring Matt Dillon) — burnt out into blue-screen mode.
It’s been almost 20 years since I’ve seen either of Lane’s films. It seems that, unlike The Toolbox Murders, both of Lane’s cherished leading roles for Cal-Am Productions seem to be lost — forever. Will we Lane Caudell fans ever see a DVD release of Goodbye, Franklin High or Hanging on a Star? It seems there is hope: A company by the name of Park Circus/Arts Alliance, a film distribution company that deals a classic back catalog of films from the 1970s and 1980s, shows both of Lane’s films in their catalog. Then, during the course of my off-the-rails insane research for my Lane Caudell thesis over on Medium, I discovered screen caps from Goodbye, Franklin Highwith TV transmission watermarks for THIS-TV, a U.S-based free-to-air cable network launched in 2008 and owned in part by MGM Studios — the studio that originally distributed Lane’s films in 1978. Most of the channel’s on-air product is from the MGM vaults.
So we Lane Caudell fans will cross our fingers in the hope that Park Circus and MGM Studio will reissue both films as a double DVD — complete with in-depth interview vignettes featuring Lane and his co-stars, along with commentary tracks from Lane.
And that’s why B&S Movies exists: Courtesy of those retro-digital reissue companies, such as the fine folks at Arrow Video and guys like Massacre Video’s Louis C. Justin and Vinegar Syndrome’s Joe Rubin, preserving those lost ‘70s drive-In and ‘80s VHS home video classics of our glorious misspent youths. Did I just kiss up, that is to say, suck enough digital ass for you guys release Lane’s films in a DVD tribute pack now? Get to the restoration Bat Cave already, Robin!
You never thought you’d learn about the Roger Wilson (Thunder Alley) and Lane Caudell teen-idol connections to the video nasties The Slayer and The Toolbox Murders during the 2019 Scarecrow Psychotronic Challenge, did you? That’s how B&S About Movies rolls.
Lane Caudell’s Music and Films– Playlist
You need more rock? Then check out our “Rock ‘n’ Roll Week” round up of more rock flicks that we’ve reviewed (Plot spoiler: it’ll lead you to a “Rock ‘n’ Roll Week II”!).
About the Author: You can read the music and film reviews of R.D Francis on Medium and learn about his work on Facebook. He also writes for B&S Movies.
Day 16. Rock ‘n’ Roll Miscreants: Give some screen time to the punks and/or metal heads.
“It’s super human, super music, super magic and super amazing! You’ll be compelled over the edge of sight and sound and under the spell of mind-boggling action and music! Pushed to the danger zone! It’s a death wish at 120 decibels! Stunt Rock! The ultimate rush!”
If there was ever a movie that can’t live up to its trailer, it’s Stunt Rock. Upon witnessing it on the Alamo Drafthouse’s Trailer War compilation, I fell in love with whatever this movie could be. I even ordered the official DVD of the film but never unwrapped it. Why? Because nothing could be as great as this trailer.
I’m so happy to have been proven wrong.
Stunt Rock — directed by Brian Trenchard-Smith (Dead-End Drive-In, Night of the Demons 2, Turkey Shootand so many more) — is exactly the type of movie I love: Take a basic concept and let hijinks ensue.
As Trenchard-Smith sais himself, the concept was “Famous stuntman meets famous rock group. Much stunt, much rock. The kids will go bananas.” He’s also referred to it as “a largely plotless, pseudo-documentary, rocumentary and basically a 90-minute trailer for Grant Page.”
Grant Page is an Australian stuntman who pretty much defied death on a daily basis throughout the 70’s and 80’s, transforming his weekend hobby into a career that would give him international exposure thanks to films like The Man From Hong Kong, Mad Max, Death Cheaters, Mad Dog Morgan, Death Ship and so many more, as well as starring in Road Games and having his own TV series, Danger Freaks.
Basically, Grant comes to America, talks about stunts, does stunts, gets the girl — Trenchard-Smith’s future wife Margaret Gerard — and hangs out with a band that combines rock and roll and magic. Monique van den Ven (Amstersdamned, the 1982 version of Breathless, Paul Verhoeven’s Turkish Delight) also shows up.
There’s also the subplot of a movie being filmed and the ways directors and agents treat their talent. The agent in this film is played by Richard Blackburn, whose career is the kind that draws the laser focus of this website. Would it just be enough if he played Dr. Zaius on the Return to the Planet of the Apes cartoon series? Let me add that he also co-wrote Eating Raoul and appears in that film as James from the Valley. But perhaps what he’s most celebrated for — at least around these parts — are for writing, directing and appearing as the Reverend in the absolutely transcendent 1973 film Lemora: A Child’s Tale of the Supernatural.
This is less of a film and more of a movie that you can shut off your brain and just savor the stuntwork while hearing Page discuss how and why he did it, interlayed with Sorcery in concert.
While Trenchard-Smith wanted Foreigner for the film, they were on tour and wouldn’t be back in time. That’s fortunate — no band other than Sorcery could have been in this movie.
A theatrical metal band formed in Los Angeles in 1976, Sorcery’s gimmick was that two master magicians would dress as Merlin (Paul Haynes) and Satan (Curtis James Hyde), join them on stage and battle one another in what their press bio referred to as “The King of the Wizards against the Prince of Darkness.”
The band was made up of Richard “Smokey” Taylor on guitar, Richie King on bass, Greg MaGie on vocals, Perry Morris on drums and the masked Doug Loch on keys. They’d later play Dick Clark’s 1982 A Rockin Halloween and 1983 A Magical Musical Halloween.
But if you really love metal, you probably know them best for a completely different film.
In 1984, Morris, Taylor and King became Headmistress, the band for the seminal metal/horror film Rocktober Blood, a film in which Billy “Eye” Harper wipes out most of his band before they reform a year after his killing spree has been halted.
That’s pretty much the movie. It doesn’t demand that you invest much more of your brain into it, instead relying on a magical blend of 1978 L.A., behind the scenes movie-making and wizards launching fire across a stage while a masked dude plays keyboards and dudes wail and shred. If this doesn’t sound like the most amazing film ever committed to celluloid to you, you’re invited to leave this site now and never come back.
The frequent use of split-screen seen in this movie was a necessary editing tool. That’s because many of the stunts from Australian films like The Dragon Files, Mad Dog Morgan and Death Cheaters was filmed on 16 mm and needed to be fixed to fit the wide frame. That said, I love how each frame has a different angle. It’s MTV three years before that little moon man ever launched.
I’m not the only lover of this film. Quentin Tarantino’s Death Proof owes the way it presents stunts — much less a New Zealand stunt icon in Zoe Bell in a starring role — to this film. And Eli Roth wore a shirt of the film while filing Hostel 2 and has featured the Sorcery songs “Talking to the Devil” in Knock Knock and “Sacrifice” in his remake of Death Wish.
Perhaps Stunt Rock has even greater cultural significance. After all, it’s Phl Hartman’s first movie. And editor Robert Leighton — who was billed as Robery Money as this was a non-union film — would go on to be the supervising editor of This Is Spinal Tap. Hmm — now it’s all making sense.
While Trenchard-Smith would at one point state that this was the worst movie he ever made, he’s softened on the film in later years. What do you expect from a movie that went from an idea in the shower to in theaters in under 5 months?
Sadly, three months prior to Allied Artists distributing the film, they went bankrupt. The film was sold to Film Ventures International. And then…the movie disappeared for decades until it was rediscovered.
You can order this movie — and lots of other amazing stuff — from the band Sorcery. Do so right now. This is a movie begging to be experienced.
BONUS: The amazing Trailers from Hell has posted Trenchard-Smith discussing the film over the trailer and it’s everything you want it to be.
DAY 15. PICK YOUR POISON: One with some drugs in it. Turn on, tune in…and freak out!
You know why I’ve never done acid? This movie right here. After all, it has an “inspired by true events” square up in the end credits.
After a series of seemingly unconnected murders in Los Angeles, only one link keeps coming up — every single person took the same strain of LSD called Blue Sunshine.
Yep — the sins of the past decade are ready to come back and destroy the “Me” decade.
Zalman King — yes, the same man who got your mom all tingly after you went to bed with Showtime’s Red Show Diaries — plays Jerry Zipkin, a man accused of the murders who — in true giallo-style — must clear his name. That’s because he was at a party where the murders may have started, complete with a screaming Brion James and Billy Crystal’s brother singing Frank Sinatra songs before he starts throwing women into the fireplace.
If turns out that if you took Blue Sunshine, chances are that you’re about to lose all your hair, go crazy and start killing everyone in your path. Of course, no one knew this ten years ago when they were all dosing on it back in college. Chromosomal damage can be a real b, you know?
How can you not love a movie whose title is spoken by a parrot? One that has a climactic disco shootout? Or is so 1970’s that it ends up speaking for pretty much the entire decade?
Between the self-medicating Dr. David Blume, the hard-drinking and hair losing John O’Malley and Ed Flemming (Mark Goddard, Major Don West from Lost In Space) are all caught up in the grip of the bad trip. The effects pretty much sum up Flemming’s political campaign: “In the 1960s, Ed Flemming and his generation shook up the system. Now he’s working within it.” He has become the system. It’s as if the children in Manson’s famous quote — “These children that come at you with knives–they are your children. You taught them. I didn’t teach them. I just tried to help them stand up.” — are even more dangerous when fully grown.
Goddard isn’t the only TV star that shows up, as Alice Ghostly (Esmerelda from Bewitched) makes an appearance.
Writer and director Jeff Lieberman would lend his strange style to other films like Squirm, Remote Control, Just Before Dawn and the odd true crime TV show Love You to Death that starred John Waters as a Grim Reaper attending weddings of partners that would soon kill one another.
The director claims that two major TV networks expressed interest in purchasing the film as a “movie of the week.” The opportunity to get double the budget was appealing, but after seeing the edits that the movie would need to be able to play on network TV, Lieberman decided to produce this for theaters.
You can check out Blue Sunshine on Shudder or get the blu ray from Film Centrix.
Any time people wonder why women keep pushing harder and harder for their inalienable rights, you should force them to watch this movie, which shows how far our society has come since 1978. There’s a scene in here that literally made us start yelling at the TV set because of how insane it is. Yet forty years ago, this type of thinking was commonplace.
Originally airing on CBS on September 20, 1978, Are You In the House Alone? is based on the 1976 novel of the same name by Richard Peck.
Gail Osborne (Kathleen Beller, Dynasty) is a high school student dealing with all the pressures of being sixteen, such as discover her skills as a photographer and dealing with boys who only want sex. Her family has moved away from San Francisco to a new town to escape the dangers of the big city.
She starts dating a guy named Steve (Scott Colomby, Tony from Caddyshack), despite her overprotective parents (Blythe Danner and Tony Bill). Despite this young love flowering, Gail keeps getting threatening letters and calls from a man who laughs at her. She asks her principal for help and is basically told that it’s all probably her fault for a way that she’s treated one of her male classmates.
Gail’s life is pretty much falling apart. Her parents constantly fight, her dad’s back off the wagon and he gets fired from his job without telling anyone. The letters and calls start to increase and we have a red herring dangled in our snooping noses in the person of way too involved photography teacher Chris Elden (played by the incredibly named Alan Fudge who was in Galaxis, My Demon Lover, and Brainstorm).
Surprise — it ends up being her best friend Allison’s (Robin Mattson, who was in Candy Stripe Nurses and a film that this is remakably similar to, Secret Night Caller) boyfriend Phil (Dennis Quaid, who is so young it’ll blow your mind). He attacks her while she’s babysitting the children of Jessica Hirsch (Tricia O’Neil, Piranha II: The Spawing), a lawyer who just happens to be dating the aforementioned Mr. Elden.
The shocking part we mentioned above is that when Jessica becomes Gail’s lawyer, she tells her that there’s a chance no one will put Phil in jail because she’s not a virgin anymore. The world may be a mess these days, but man, in 1978, it was a real mess.
While not technically a slasher — there’s no body count to speak of — the hallmarks of the genre, such as a babysitter being stalked and constantly threatened by a maniac, are all here.
Also — what was it with 1970’s made for TV movie houses and plants? Every single home in this movie is abundantly lush with vegetation. Every plant is green and thriving, despite no sunlight in any of these homes. How did they do it?
Want to watch it? Good news. It’s on Amazon Prime and I’ve embedded the full movie from YouTube below. You can also buy it from Shout! Factory on a double disk with The Initiation of Sarah. I wish they had put out more TV movies like this!
The fact that the creator of Mardi Gras Massacre, Jack Weis, went on to direct a Melissa Etheridge special makes me happy to no end. Because it’s as far away as possible from this scuzzy, scummy and downright nasty addition to the world of the slasher.
While most slashers spend so much time naming their killer exciting names like the Phantom Killer, Madman Mars or Frank Zito, the killer here is just named John.
That said, he may as well have been named Fuad Ramses, because if Mardi Gras Massacre was any more like Blood Feast, it would have to film a TV playing that film.
John is searching the bars and strip clubs of New Orleans to find the most evil women possible so that he can take them home, tie them up on his Aztec altar, but on his metal mask, give them a massage and then rip out their hearts in a ritual to the goddess Coati. If the shot of the heart being sliced out looks the exact same every single time this happens, so much the better.
Sergeant Frank Abraham gets assigned to the case after the first girl, Shirley, is found on the train tracks with her organs missing. Along the way, he starts sleeping with one of the local girls, Sherry. Their romance is, well, it’s not really a romance as much as a bad cop sleeping with a bad girl with a heart of gold. Honestly, no one in this movie is all that morally sound, as we should see Frank as the hero and then there’s a scene where he slaps Sherry around. When they reunite at the end, it’s not really something that’s a call for celebration.
What does make this movie worth shouting about are the extended disco scenes that seem to go on forever. There’s an amazing one where several girls get into a dance floor skirmish that I watched several times in a row, shouting at the screen in pure joy. There’s also a montage where he cops are questioning suspects intercut with dancing, particularly a dancing street performer who answers all of the cops’ questions with some fancy steps.
Mardi Gras Massacre has everything a movie needed to make it in the slasher boom: an amazing poster, a great tag, lots of gore and nudity, an interesting title and a willingness to be reprehensible trash (that’s a compliment, I swear).
It’s no accident that it ended up as one of the original video nasties, a title that I’m certain it wore with no small amount of pride.
Remember when Patty jumped off a dam rather than get the Mark of the Beast? Yeah, well six years later, she’s still alive and about to be executed the next morning for refusing to take the Mark.
Even though Patty knows what lies ahead if she takes the Mark, she still can’t believe in a God that would put everyone through the End of All Things. So what happens next? Where can Patty go to avoid the UN troops, now known as UNITE, who want to kill every Christian who remains faithful?
Patty and two of her friends, Wenda and Sandy Johnson — hide out at Patty’s grandmother’s. Our protagonist has lost her grandmother and husband to the Rapture, but she’s been left behind. Everyone is now against her, from a beggar she helps to her other friends Jerry and Diane.
This movie has descended to the depths of evil formerly reserved for Jack Chick’s tract The Beast. There must have been some meeting of evangelical Christians who decided that the Satanic New World Order would destroy those left behind that still believe in God with guillotines.
There are plenty of things to learn in this movie about prophecy, how the end of the world will all happen, why you shouldn’t believe in UFOs, how credit cards and the Mark of the Beast are the same and different, why authorities on Judiasm don’t get Raptured and Christians do…seriously, this movie will simultanelously frighten and educate you.
Russell Doughten — who also wrote these movies — appears again as Reverend Matthew Turner, a survivalist with an elaborate chart of the exact timing of the end of the world. I love that this character basically tells Patty that it isn’t his fault that he was a bad preacher; it’s her fault for not believing.
Before all this evangelical craziness, Doughten produced and did uncredited direction on The Blob. Yes, really.
Unlike other end of the world theories, like the astounding Ron Ormond film If Footmen Tire You, What Will Horses Do? which thought Communism would bring about Armageddon or Jack Chick blaming the Vatican, Doughten figured the United Nations as the ones who would be behind it all.
Way back in 1974, William Dale Fries Jr. was working as a creative director for Bozell & Jacobs, an Omaha, Nebraska-based ad agency. He created a Clio Award-winning (the Clios are the Oscars of the ad industry, but perhaps AVN awards would be more appropriate) campaign for Old Home Bread that featured a truck driver named C.W. McCall, which led to a series of songs called “Old Home Filler-Up an’ Keep on a-Truckin’ Café”, “Wolf Creek Pass” and “Black Bear Road.”
Fries wrote the lyrics and sang those songs, while Chip Davis — who would go to dominate your parents’ holidays with Mannheim Steamroller — wrote the music.
Their song “Convoy,” though became a monster. A true crossover, it became the number-one song on both the country and pop charts in the US, number one in Canada and number two in the UK. In fact, it’s such a big song that it’s listed 98th among Rolling Stone’s 100 Greatest Country Songs of All Time.
Please note: McCall is no one hit wonder. The aforementioned “Wolf Creek Pass” hit #40 in 1975. and three others songs — “Old Home Filler-Up an’ Keep on a-Truckin’ Cafe”, “‘Round the World with the Rubber Duck” (the pirate-themed sequel to “Convoy” where the convoy leaves the US and travels around the world, touring the UK, France, West and East Germany, the USSR, Japan and even Australia, where the lyrics “Ah, ten-four, Pig Pen, what’s your twenty? Australia? Mercy sakes, ain’t nothin’ down there but Tasmanian devils and them cue-walla bears” are sung) and “There Won’t Be No Country Music (There Won’t Be No Rock ‘n’ Roll)” — reached the Billboard Hot 100 when things like that really mattered. And to top that off, a dozen McCall songs reached the Billboard’s Hot Country Singles chart.
Let me explain one more time how big of a song this was: Sam Peckinpah — yes, the guy who directed The Wild Bunch and Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia and played a drunk in utterly bizarre Ovidio G. Assonitis film The Visitor— made a movie about it. Even stranger, it was the most successful movie of his entire career.
Somwhere in the Arizona desert, truck driver Martin “Rubber Duck” Penwald (Kris Kristofferson, pretty much the most attractive man to ever drive an 18 wheeler) is passed by Melissa (Ali McGraw, a woman able to break the hearts of both Robert Evans and Steve McQueen, but once you see her in this film you’ll say, well, yes, I understand how they could throw caution to the wind and ruin their lives for Ali McGraw; PS — I learned pretty much 99% of my writing style from The Kid Stays In The Picture), a photographer who gets him in trouble with his arch enemy Sheriff “Dirty Lyle” Wallace (Ernest Borgnine, The Devil’s Rain!). It turns out that the Rubber Duck has been pulling his rig into the driveway of Lyle’s wife Violet (Cassie Yates, who we all know and love from Rolling Thunder) if you know what I’m driving at.
Along for the ride are fellow truckers Pig Pen/Love Machine (Burt Young, who I will always love thanks to Amityville II: The Possession) and Spider Mike (Franklyn Ajaye, The ‘Burbs). After a big brawl, Melissa ends up riding with Rubber Duck as Lyle gives chase.
A giant convoy — yes, there has to be one — saves our hero, brought together through the magic of the Citizen’s Band radio. Sure, the National Guard gets involved after the trucks petty much ruin a Texas jail, but everything works out just fine.
During this period of Peckinpah’s life, he was struggling with addictions to alcohol and drugs. Much of the film is actually directed by actor and friend James Coburn, who was originally brought in to serve as second unit director. The movie was made at twice the budget, but still made tons of money at the box office.
However, rumors of increasingly destructive alcohol and cocaine abuse would ruin the director, leading to him making only one movie, The Osterman Weekend, before his death. At one point, the cocktail of blow, quaaludes and vitamin shots that left Peckinpah believing that both Steve McQueen and the Executive Car Leasing Co. were conspiring to murder him.
Speaking of cocaine, Ali MacGraw, who was always uncomfortable in front of the camera, used powder and tequila to perform until she went too far one day on set, which led to her quitting for good.
The soundtrack to this movie is exactly what was playing on my hometown radio station, WFEM in New Castle, in 1978. “Lucille” by Kenny Rogers. “Don’t It Make My Brown Eyes Blue” by Crystal Gayle. “Okie From Muskogee” by Merle Haggard. All it’s missing is the Steckman Memorial death report at 7 AM, with the theme music of BJ Thomas singing “Morning Has Broken” followed by Paul Harvey and it’s exactly the music of my young life. I also realize that that was a joke that literally no one other than me would get, but when you own your own website, you can make obscure jokes about the small power country music FM stations of your youth, too.
Somewhere out there, there’s a print of Peckinpah’s two and a half hour plus director’s cut before the studio took it from him. I would watch that right now.
You know who else must have liked this movie? Tarantino. Stuntman Mike’s hood ornament in Death Proof is the Rubber Duck’s.
Finally, one more moment from my youth.
Saturday afternoon’s belonged to WUAB in Clevaland’s Superhost (the nights belonged to Saturday Night Live and Chilly Billy Cardille’s Chiller Theater). Suprhost was really Marty Sullivan, a floor manager and occasional news anchor at the station who showed monster movies and the Three Stoges every weekend from 1969 to 1989 in a baggy Superman suit with a red nose. He made his own version of “Convoy” that was so popular that it aired every single week, because none of us had VCRs, much less the internet. It might seem silly to you today, dear reader, but having horror movie hosts that would do things this ridiculous created memories that will never go away and bring happy tears to my eyes even as I type this.
Deathsport unites everything I love about late 1970’s junk film all in one place. It’s set after a nuclear war. It has David Carradine in it. Claudia Jennings, too. Throw in Richard Lynch, motorcycles, lucite swords and strange religion and you’ve discovered the most perfect of all movies for 5:44 AM on a Thursday.
This was supposed to be a sequel to Death Race 2000 with motorcycles instead of cars. Seems simple, right? After all, Corman had a five-picture commitment with David Carradine and already had Charles B. Griffith writing the script.
Corman was unhappy with the script and Nicholas Niciphor, a recent graduate of USC, got the job of writing and directing the film. He had two weeks to write and pre-produce it. And to top it off, Carradine had no real interest in being in the movie and would only give three weeks of his time to the production.
It didn’t get any easier once production began. Niciphor would later say, “The script was too ambitious, the shooting schedule too tight and…the crew and the cast were largely sodden with drugs.” He was including both Carradine and Jennings in that statement. Indeed — this was one of her last films before she died in a car crash at the age of 29.
Years later, Carradine would tell Psychotronic Video that Niciphor was “a very talented and crazy guy. As a director he was erratic and unknowing…The picture, which was brilliantly written, was unable to overcome the madness of the shoot”. He elaborated that his “direction seemed to me to mainly consist of hysteria and episodic tantrums,” including an incident where Niciphor physically attacked Jennings and got his ass kicked by Carradine in response.
For his part, Niciphor did admit to physically removing Jennings from a motorcycle because of how high she was and that Carradine routinely roughed him up on set, including breaking his nose. He had to hurry back from the hospital and finish the actor’s scenes before he left to film Circle of Iron.
After all that madness, Corman ordered reshoots. That’s kind of amazing given his stingy nature. But then the director wouldn’t work with Carradine, so Allan Arkush stepped in. He told Trailers from Hell about this experience, remembering: “Mostly we just blew up motorcycles. Lots of them. We also set some mutants on fire. And the stunning Claudia Jennings got naked. David Carradine…smoked a lot of high-grade weed and helped us to blow stuff up…Sad to say, I couldn’t save the picture.”
One of those scenes added in was a nude scene where Jennings was tortured. Why? Well, Corman felt like this movie needed more nudity. Despite plans for a third film, Deathworld, the movie didn’t perform and Carradine claimed that his career never recovered.
So what’s it all about?
A thousand years from tomorrow, after the Neutron Wars, the world is made up of city states — ala Judge Dredd — surrounded by wastelands populated by cannibal mutants and policed by the Range Guides.
Two cities — Helix and Tritan — are about to go to war with one another with their Death Machines, which are laser-equipped motorcycles. Yes, that’s the absolute furthest technology has taken us.
Meanwhile, the death penalty has been replaced by Deathsport, where criminals battle each other to the death for their freedom. Lord Zirpola (David McLean, one of the two Marlboro men to suffer from cancer) yearns to use his Death Machines on the Range Guides, but the two best, Kaz Oshay (Carradine) and Deneer (Jennings) escape.
As they search for Deneer’s missing child, Oshay must battle the man who turned on the code of the Range Guides and killed his mother, Ankar Moor (Lynch). Of course, they’re destined to battle one another in combat using their Whistler swords. If you’ve always wanted to see Richard Lynch get decapitated, well, this is the movie for you.
Someday, mark my words, I’m going to do a Letterboxd list of Hardboiled Haggarty’s many roles. The ex-pro wrestler is in this as a jailer.
Brenda Venus also appears as Adriann and her life could totally be a Roger Corman movie. When she was in college, Venus purchased a book at an auction that contained an envelope with the address of famed writer Henry Miller. She wrote to the ailing author and soon, the two became romantic pen pals with over 1,500 letters exchanged between the two of them. This relationship led to Miller becoming her mentor and Venus his muse.
Ed Millis wrote, “Venus was a source of inspiration to the aging and ailing Miller. Brenda was all of 24 years of age, Henry was 84. She was a beautiful Southern belle, “The Boticelli of Mississippi” — he called her. Henry, the renegade intellectual, the writer, had taken millions of us to the sexy Tropic of Cancer and Capricorn. Now he was sick and slowly recuperating. He needed a lift in spirits… Brenda the Muse breathed life into her mortal charge and gave him reason to live.”
After appearing in the June 1997 issue of Playboy, Venus wrote a column for the magazine called “Centerfolds on Sex.” She also wrote the books Secrets of Seduction and Secrets of Seduction for Women, which have been translated into 37 languages.
In 2002, prime minister Vladimir Putin requested that Venus visit Moscow as his guest to attend the opening performance of Venus, a play about her life. I can only imagine how bonkers that play was.
Even stranger, the music in this movie comes from The film was scored by Andy Stein (A Prairie Home Companion’s Guys All-Star Shoe Band and Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen) and Jerry Garcia.
My favorite part of this movie is the strange speeches that the Range Guides give to one another. They also heal one another through sex, which is very 1970’s. Carradine wrote in his memoirs that when the time came to shoot those scenes, Niciphor told him he hadn’t slept with a woman in six months, so he couldn’t trust himself to be naked in the same room as Jennings. Carradine to directed those scenes instead. He also probably punched Niciphor in the face afterward.
In true Roger Corman fashion, some of the footage from this film was sold to the TV show The Fall Guy, where it appears in the episode “Baker’s Dozen.”
You can get this on a double disc with Battletruck from Shout! Factory. It’s also free on Tubi.
B&S About Movies 
You must be logged in to post a comment.