(Spoilers.) The second film of both the "official" three-film series and the "unofficial" four-film series, Ilsa, Harem Keeper of the Oils Sheiks slid into the grindhouses about a year after its more-extreme predecessor, Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS (1975 / trailer).* Both were directed by the grindhouse auteur Don Edmonds (1 Sept 1937 – 30 May 2009), but for whatever reasons Edmonds was replaced by the unknown director Jean LaFleuer two years later when the Roger Corman-produced Ilsa, the Tigress of Siberia (1977 / trailer) hit the screens. That same year, the indefatigable Jesús Franco (12 May 1930 – 2 Apr 2013) released his non-Ilsa euro-production starring Dyanne Thorne (14 Oct 1936 – 28 Jan 2020),** Wanda the Wicked Warden (trailer), which has since gone through a variety of a.k.a. titles but is now perhaps best known as Ilsa the Wicked Warden.
Heavily censored trailer to
Ilsa, Harem Keeper of the Oil Sheiks:
* "Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS (1975), [is] considered [one of] the first and also most famous movie of the Nazi exploitation genre. The movie was filmed on the prison camp sets left behind from the Hogan's Heroes (1965-71) television series. Thorne's Ilsa is a brutal buxom commandant of a German prisoner-of-war camp during World War II. She sexually and physically abuses her male and female prisoners and uses them for diabolical medical experiments. In this movie she also raped her male prisoners. Those of them who ejaculated before she was done were then castrated. Her downfall comes when she submits herself to an American prisoner who can withhold ejaculating. The film, which was banned in Germany, was notorious for its level of sadism and for portraying Nazi cruelty as sexual actions. [Boobpedia]"
**Pneumatic MILF Dyanne "Ilse" Thorne [a.k.a. Lahna Monroe, Rosalee Stein, Diane and/ or Diana Thorne, Penni Walters, Frenchie Dior and Sally Levinson,], whose illustrious career includes loads of fun sleaze and memorable grime — for example: Hellhole (1985, with Edy Williams), Wam Bam Thank You Spaceman (1975, with an uncredited Haji), Blood Sabbath (1972, with an uncredited Uschi), Point of Terror (1971 / trailer), Pinocchio (1971, with Karen Smith & Uschi), Joseph W. Sarno's Sin in the Suburbs (1964 / trailer) and his lost Lash of Lust (1962, with Gigi Darlene) — ended her days as a non-denominational minister offering "an alternative to chapel weddings" in Las Vegas with her husband Howard Maurer, whom is found playing small parts in many of her films, including this one.
Uncensored trailer to
Ilsa, Harem Keeper of the Oil Sheiks:
While of varying caliber in some minor regards, all the Ilsa films are prime slabs of unadulterated sexploitation trash, chock full of blood and breasts and death and sex and torture and sadism and shock sequences, usually presented without the intention of making you laugh (though you just might), but nevertheless with some performances lightly dusted with a touch of camp.
Another (censored) trailer to
Ilsa, Harem Keeper of the Oil Sheiks:
Ilsa, Harem Keeper of the Oils Sheiks, as over the top and sleazy as it is, substantially tones down the blood and breasts and death and sex and torture and sadism and shock sequences in comparison to the extents taken in the first movie. Unlike with Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS, this time around the producers were aiming for an R-rating. Toned down or not, Ilsa, Harem Keeper of the Oils Sheiks should not be watched by everyone, and definitely not on a first date, as many might find the movie offensive...
All Ilsa movies pretty much follow the same storyline, though it does get tweaked as needed for the given new temporal setting and to make the given installment appear as an at least somewhat different movie. As for Ilsa, whether in 1940s Nazi Germany or 1950s Siberia or modern-day (as in: mid-to-late '70s) Arabia or whatever banana republic and timeframe Wicked Warden is set in, she and her absolutely amazing 100%-natural love pillows (37C-17-33) never age a day* — and that despite the fact that, for example, she literally gets her head shot off at the end of She Wolf of the SS.**
*Dyanne "Ilsa" Thorne is not the only female of fabulous attributes to return from the dead of She Wolf of the SS to once again bare their heavenly assets in Harem Keeper of the Oil Sheiks. Colleen Brennan (a.k.a. Sharon Kelly) appears uncredited She Wolf of the SS and dies in Nazi Germany as an unnamed redheaded prisoner; she reappears and dies again in Harem Keeper of the Oil Sheiks; likewise, the Great Uschi, who appears (uncredited) in the first film as the prisoner killed in a pressurized chamber, reappears (credited) in the sequel, like Brennan, as one of the three new kidnapped beauties added to the Sheik's harem. Unlike Brennan's character, however, Uschi's Inga Lindström — "the new Scandinavian love goddess" — survives to return home. As does the third and relatively unassuming addition to the harem, the equestrian champion, played by the uncredited Penthouse model Derna Wong Wylde (of Planet of Dinosaurs [1977 / full movie]). Wylde spent time in prison in the '90s, lost a lung somewhere along the way, and might now be living in Oregon (by way of Henderson, NV). Ms. Brennan, BTW, does not hold either of her Ilsa appearances highly. In an interview, she once said, "As evidenced by my appearance in not one but two Ilsa movies, I was not yet strong enough to pass up a part just because there was a little humiliation involved. [...] Okay, here's the rule of thumb I developed too late: Never be in a movie that strives to attract an audience with whom you would not choose to share a theater."
**In an interview, Don Edmonds mentions, "When they came to me about a year and a half after the original and said they wanted to make a sequel, I said, 'Gee, let me ask you, I may be mistaken, but don't you remember we killed the shit out of her in this first movie?' They said nobody will remember, and nobody did!"
Scene from
Ilsa, Harem Keeper of the Oil Sheiks:
A wonderfully cheap and nicely sleazy sexploitation anti-classic, Ilsa Harem Keeper of the Oil Sheiks is a low-rent variant of the traditional WIP film, but instead of a prison we have a sheikh's harem — the harem of nasty, paranoid and sex-obsessed El Sarif (Jerry Delony [6 Mar 1934 – 28 Nov 2017]*), who expands his harem by kidnapping beautiful women from the West. As the film opens, we see the delivery of his three latest additions (played by Uschi, Brennan, and Wylde), flown in to the Arabian deserts (of Palm Springs, actually) by helicopter; the three Babes of Yesteryear subsequently spend most of the film naked but for the smallest of gold chastity belts.
Nasty but pneumatic Ilsa (Thorne) — she is perhaps the most-stacked woman of the movie, despite the impressive lung covers of the Great Uschi, Colleen Brennan, the Great Haji, an uncredited and barely noticeable Joyce Gibson (10 Mar 1950 – 13 Oct 2016), and the now forgotten nude-magazine staple and occasional porn-loop actress Su Ling (below on a magazine cover) — is the harem keeper, ably assisted by her two lithe, almost identical Black Amazonian assistants, Satin (Tanya Boyd**) and Velvet (Marilyn Joi). Trouble comes in the form of a CIA agent Cmdr. Adam Scott (Michael "I'm a Talking Board" Thayer***), who arrives with a military-inappropriate haircut pretending to be the assistant of Dr. Kaiser (Richard Kennedy****): Scott's such a good fuck that Ilsa can't bring herself to kill him when ordered by El Sarif, which leads to El Sarif punishing her — he strings her up and has a leprous beggar (George 'Buck' Flower [28 Oct 1937 – 18 Jun 2004]) fondle and go down on her. But hell hath no fury like a sadistic Harem Keeper molested by a leprous beggar...
* Delony had previously appeared, almost always uncredited, in a few mega-low budget flicks like Ray Dennis Steckler's poorly filmed porn flicks Count All-Cum (1971) & Nazi Sex Experiments (1973), the easily found online and uninteresting porno Harry Hard, Detective (1971), the mondo sex shockumentary Sex Freaks (1974 / full NSFW film), and exploitation king Albert Zugsmith's Violated (1975 / trailer). After Ilsa, it was a full 14 years before he appeared in another movie: he is in one of the multitudes of mini-segments strung together to make the great movie that is Richard Linklater's Slacker (1990 / trailer).
**Ms. Boyd went on to a 13-year stint on the soap Days of Our Lives, but in her day she took part some other fun films of the type we here at a wasted life like, such as the Blaxploitation nadir Solomon King (1974 / trailer), Black Shampoo (1976, with Jacqulin Cole), Al Adamson's Black Heat (1976 / trailer), and The Happy Hooker Goes to Hollywood (1980, with Dick Miller).
***Max Thayer, as he later called himself, perhaps deserves some slack: he is dubbed in the movie, which he refers to as "A truly atrocious piece of merde." Supposedly, he was too hung-over from getting drunk with Thorne to do the dubbing...
****Richard Kennedy (14 Feb 1929 – 1 Oct 1985) could well be playing Dr. Kaiser as a persiflage of Henry Kissinger, something possibly more evident back when the film came out than now. He also played the General in She Wolf of the SS, and Colleen Brennan, who seldom seems to have anything nice to say about people, went on the record that "As unlike his character as possible, he was a teddy bear and a great storyteller." Kennedy never fully made it out of the Bs and Zs, but aside from his two Ilsa films, his numerous projects of note include Invasion of the Blood Farmers (1971 / trailer), Fangs (1974 / trailer), Matt Cimber's Candy Tangerine Man (1975, with Marilyn Joi) & Lady Cocoa (1975 / full movie) & The Witch Who Came from the Sea (1976 / trailer), The Love Butcher (1975 / trailer), C.B. Hustlers (1976, with The Great Uschi), Mortuary Academy (1988 / full movie) and more.
Hardly as extreme as Ilsa She Wolf of the SS, which truly leaves one feeling slightly dirty after watching, Ilsa Harem Keeper of the Oil Sheiks is nevertheless a revoltingly disgusting slab of exploitively misogynistic gaiety, and as such makes for a great evening's entertainment. The script supplied by the possibly pseudonymous scriptwriter Langston Stafford (Ilsa Harem Keeper of the Oil Sheiks is his only known writing credit of any kind) is ridiculous and stuffed with grotesque and ludicrous ideas and developments, not to mention copious naked women, sex scenes and violence. The movie is basically irredeemable trash, but as such it is also amazingly amusing and blackly funny; indeed, both Ilse and El Sarif are often played with a slightly campy edge, to the advantage of the movie.
Ilsa Harem Keeper of the Oil Sheiks is simply vintage trash, and all its bad acting, threadbare sets, low-rent blood and laughable violence has only gotten worse and more unbelievable with age, thus making it all the more fun, not to mention shocking. Wonderfully wretched movies like this one really don't get made anymore — regrettably.
Interestingly enough, for all its heavy misogyny, the movie never actually disrespects women as much as, say, the mondo documentary Women of the World (1963). Ilsa Harem Keeper of the Oil Sheiks may drag many of the women through filth and violence and objectification, but unlike WoW, it is never condescending. As such, despite all the movie's sexist objectification, the women often come across as strong, independent people (with big breasts, usually exposed). The three new women in the harem, for example, have no choice about being here, and the desire to adapt so as to survive cannot be held against them — also, when finally given the chance to fight back, they and the other harem women don't flinch and retreat into a corner, like the average American Democrat when confronted by today's fascist Republicans, but fight with conviction and determination.
In turn, Haji, who doesn't really shine* in her thankless role as a belly-dancing, possibly incompetent spy, may finally cave in and spill the beans, but she has backbone and undergoes some hardcore (if not very convincing-looking) torture before she does so. (All her fortitude is in vain, however, and she meets her ignoble end as a human guinea pig when Ilsa tests her latest invention, the exploding diaphragm.)
* That she does not exactly shine is something Haji herself seems to have later felt, going by her relatively circumspect statement she made about the movie when talking to Shock Cinema: "I will limit myself as far as doing certain things, and some of the stuff they did in that film was a little too funky for me. I liked my part, but I don't think I did a very good job with it."
As for the bad gals, they are not kick-arounds who forgive and forget when done dirty. True, Ilsa is basically fucked into her senses by her stud,* but after El Sarif tries to demean her into deference, she promptly stages an uprising — true, only for revenge and not for any noble reason, but as terrible a person she is, she is not one to let herself be walked on.
*Max Thayer makes for one unappetizing plaything. Generically handsome and with a nicely tight ass, he nevertheless remains unappealing. His total lack of any attempt at acting doesn't help any, either. Throughout the movie, Thayer proves himself unable to convey a single emotion convincingly — he can't even make "You bitch!" sound insulting or angry. Nevertheless, in real life he had a mild career — he followed up Ilsa with Planet of Dinosaurs (1977 / trailer) and Stephan C. Apostolof's Hot Ice (1977 / song), and eventually managed to become a lead in Philippine-shot flotsam like Phantom Soldiers (1987 / trailer), No Dead Heroes (1986 / full movie), No Retreat No Surrender 2 (1987 / full movie), The Retrievers (1982 / trailer), and and and...
Satin and Velvet are perhaps the two strongest female characters of the movie, something they manage to convey even when completely naked and fully oiled. They can take and deliver a beating better than "a real man", as one sees in a scene that ends with each of them holding a testicle in their respective hands. Whether or not they are a loving couple or just almost identical-looking, loyal, ass-kicking assistants is revealed towards the end, and it almost comes across as tragic.* (Almost.)
* Marilyn Joi(above), who plays Velvet, speaks of the movie in her interview with Shock Cinema, where she reveals herself still miffed at how her big scene [when Satin is killed] was thwarted: "There's a scene in that movie — when we shot it, I had people crying on the set! Crying! In a B-movie! But when they edited the film, they chopped it up so much that they ruined it. Yes, but it wasn't just Tanya dying. I thought about my kid, I thought about my sister — I really put a lot into that scene, but they cut it all up. I run toward Tanya, and they cut away. I pick her up, and they cut away. Instead of letting me run through the room, they cut to all these other people shooting off guns! That's when I learned how important editing is. It can make or break you." That said, you still feel her pain...
Strong women or not, there is never any doubt that was never any intention on the part of the filmmakers to convey some subliminal pro-women message in Ilsa, Harem Keeper of the Oil Sheiks. This movie was meant for the grindhouses and the people who went to them, and it is truly a fine example of the late-stage sexploitation genre. We would never watch it with our women friends or significant other, but we will definitely give it a rating of Ten out of Ten Bloody Testicles! Recommended!
Postscript: Talk about a dream double feature! Above, at the Bellevue Drive-in in Memphis in 1982, "Elsa the Harem Keeper" hit the screen with another a wasted life favorite, Daughters of Dracula, otherwise known as José Ramón Larraz's Vampyres (1974)...
(Spoilers.) Not far into watching The Haunting of the Queen Mary, an earlier horror movie set in a run-down apartment building in Los Angeles came to our mind, namely Circle of Eight (2009). That film, nominally a watchable horror movie with a gratuitous breast or two, is basically an extended, misfired commercial for Mountain Dew. (Misfired in that Mountain Dew is used by one character as his favorite painting substance, which hardly makes Mountain Dew attractive as something to drink.)
That feeling of an extended commercial also pops up its large, jug-eared head in The Haunting of the Queen Mary, as the movie does exude the aura of an extended cinematic commercial for one of the diverse haunted-attraction experience tours that are given on the Long Beach-berthed tourist attraction that is the real Queen Mary, which, in 2008, Timemagazine placed amongst its "Top 10 Haunted Places".
Whether or not The Haunting of the Queen Mary works better as a commercial than as a horror film might be open for discussion, but now, two years after its release, if we were to compare the movie to other haunted-ship movies we've seen and liked, this baby is put to shame by Alvin Rakoff's wonderfully tacky Death Ship (1980 / trailer) — who can forget its nonsensical development, or how Mrs. Morgan (Kate Reid [4 Nov 1930 – 27 Mar 1993] of The Andromeda Strain [1971 / trailer]) starts decomposed alive after eating some hard candy? — not to mention by Ghost Ship (2002 / trailer), with its breathtaking opening scene and/or, to go way further back, the almost ancient and far-more-creaky but narratively stronger Terror Aboard (1933 / full movie), a great-granddaddy of the bodycount film. In other words, while The Haunting of the Queen Mary ain't exactly terrible, there are better horror ships out there that: one, are not as much of a head-scratcher; and two, are far more scary (or at least suspenseful) most of the time.
Trailer to
The Haunting of the Queen Mary:
Which is a shame, for when The Haunting of the Queen Mary is on the mark — an endangered child at a swimming pool, a "madman" butchering people with an ax, the Golden Twenties-like lady playing the piano — some of the scenes are truly scary, and definitely punch hard. The problem is that not only do too many aspects of the story make no sense at all, the story is also hard to follow — all the more so since the movie involves two interconnected and crosscut narratives from different temporal periods. Worse, there are also flashbacks in both time frames, and so much info comes out only in drips and drops that one wonders what was lost in the cutting room. The Haunting of the Queen Mary truly deserts its narrative and leaves the viewer to put together too many puzzle pieces to truly enjoy the movie's often rather startling or attractive visuals. And when it comes to the eye-candy (if at times horrific) visuals of the movie, quiet often they are so cinematically pleasing that they undermine the film: the tale itself is never as strong, as convincing, or as interesting as much of what you see, and the good stuff you see only makes all the flick's faults more obvious.
A handsome traveling shot from the horizon into the troubled ship on Halloween night 1938, about two years after Queen Mary embarked on her maiden voyage in 1936, sets the tone of the movie: beautifully shot, the is-the-ship-sinking-? scene promptly does a flashback to earlier that very day. (To paraphrase Katy "Fruit Sister" Perry, the film changes its timeframe more often than a girl changes clothes.) We follow a family of three who sneak their way into the reservation-only first-class Halloween Party, to disastrous results, although the daughter Gwen (Florrie Wilkinson) does dance with [an unconvincing] Fred Astaire (Wesley Alfvin) and gets discovered by Hollywood. Unluckily, by the time she gets discovered, her war-disfigured daddy,* David Ratch (Will Coban of King Arthur: Legend of the Sword [2017]), is already possessed by the killer spirit of the man once welded under the ship's swimming pool* and, axe or surgical knife in hand, he has started to make short order of a number of people in a desperate attempt to finally get off the ship...
*Daddy's real face is one of the great shocks of the film, and easily reminds us of the horrors of war. As for the man under the pool, that is a riff on the legend of the man welded into the hull of the RMS Titanic — or was it the SS Great Eastern? Take your pick.
Meanwhile, in Timeline Two, the now of the 21st century, troubled couple Anne (Alice Eve of ATM [2012 / trailer] and Star Trek into Darkness [2013 / trailer]) and Patrick (Joel Fry of In the Earth [2021 / trailer], Cordelia [2019 / trailer], and Rock and Roll and Fuck'n'Lovely [2013 / trailer]) show up at the docked Queen Mary to pitch a possible tourist project to the oddly unnerving Lieutenant Gibson (Tim Downie). Patrick, the world's least-observant daddy, loses sight of their son Lukas (Lenny Rush, a 14-year-old playing an eight-year-old), but he shows up later, soaked to the bone...
So far, so good: both interludes offer moments of tension and horror, all of which has the added glean of director Gary Shore's* assured visual playfulness and fine but unflinching eye. Unluckily, the ghost story that follows is a tangled and untidy mess that seldom makes sense and leaves one wanting Cliff Notes and/or seriously considering the eject button. Now and then there is an inspired shock or even latently unnerving background scare, but much like Patrick and Anne seem to run around without rhyme or reason, the narrative doesn't really go anywhere. The viewer is left on the deck of confusion instead of enjoying what initially looks like it'll be thrilling sail into the nightmarish.
*Shore's biggest movie to date is undoubtedly his feature film directorial debut Dracula Untold (2014 / trailer), which could been a contender but blew it by putting stud-muffin Dominic "Preacher" Cooper in brown face.
The Haunting of Queen Mary is far more a well-made missed opportunity than an effective horror movie. Confusing and impenetrable, moments of true inspiration arise occasionally amidst all the thick mist of bewilderment, all liberally spiced with a rich sense of aesthetics and seductive visual glow. If only for its refined sense of visuals, and for its occasionally truly bloody deaths, the movie is not a complete loss. But people who want a story to their refined cinematic style might want to give The Haunting of Queen Mary a wide berth.
(Spoilers.) The differences in perspective are sometimes amazing. When we first considered e-buying this DVD years ago, back when one still bought DVDs on e-bay, we looked the movie up online and stumbled upon Variety's review from 2002, which says: "Beneath its cheesy title, there lurks one of the most inventive Hong Kong psycho-thrillers of recent years in Horror Hotline … Big Head Monster, one of the very few to come close to replicating the clammy chills of late '90s Japanese pics like The Ring (trailer)." Okay, it only took us about another ten years to finally get around to popping the DVD — Mandarin or Cantonese language, English subtitles — into our player, but: Wow! One can only wonder with what the filmmakers bribed Variety's author back then to get him to write such misleading bullshit.
Horror Hotline … Big Head Monster is a truly terrible film, the kind that is so awful and (as its title indicates) cheesy that you can enjoy it as being terrible, but not as thrilling, surprising, chilling, inventive, or anything else that might tip director Soi Cheang's first horror film* (but third feature-length project) into being watchable as a "good" movie. Seriously, the movie is pure rǔshān: predictable, frightless, boring, disjointed, illogical, and even dull on occasion. It says something when poorly translated subtitles truly improve what is transpiring on the screen.
*He directed three more horror films in quick succession: New Blood / Hayn huet ching nin (2002/ trailer), The Death Curse / Goo chak sam fong fong (2003 / trailer) and Home Sweet Home / Gwai muk (2005 / trailer). After having watched Horror Hotline … Big Head Monster, we will not be looking for them.
Trailer to
Horror Hotline ... Big Head Baby:
Amazingly enough, despite the utter ridiculousness of most of the movie, it is presented with no humor – for that, it does engender guffaws and groans and giggles, and is impossible to take seriously. Opening with some guy named Sam (Sam Lee of Nude Fear / Jui hung 20 nin [1998], Bio-Zombie / Sang faa sau see [1998 / trailer] and tons of other stuff) who, playing paintball, suddenly starts hunting something he assumes is an "illegal" — more than once the movie shows some obvious disdain for outsiders — but, instead, ends up at dilapidated cement shack where he is confronted by the big head baby in a cage (we often see that cage, but never the big head baby — and a faceless, long-haired woman wearing what looks like a red cocktail dress. Then we meet Helen the Nurse (the beautiful Niki Chow of The Cursed / You er yuan [2018 / trailer], New Blood / Hyn huet ching nin [2002 / trailer] and Suspect / Chao yi shen tan [2024 / trailer]), who has an obviously dysfunctional relationship with radio producer Ben (Francis Ng of Devil Hunters[1989], The Bride with White Hair I [1993] & The Bride with White Hair II [1993 / trailer], Full Alert / Go do gaai bei (1997 / trailer] and so much more) and, unbeknownst to Ben, recently aborted the child he didn't know was inside her.* A film crew from the US, led by Mavis (Josie Ho of Habit [2021 / trailer], The Twins Effect[2002], The Apostles / Gui zhen [2013 / trailer], and Dream Home / Wai dor lei ah yat ho [2010 / trailer]), shows up to do a report on his popular radio show, Horror Hotline, where people call up to share their "true" ghost stories. When some guy named Chris calls up to share his experience with the Big Head Baby, and when Mavis decides to do some follow-up investigations on the story, strange and terrible things start to happen — including the disappearance (and death) of her cameraman, Mike (an uncredited Michael Clements of The Twins Effect [2003] and Naked Weapon [2002])...
*You would think that has something to do with the plot and the big head baby. It doesn't. All it does is allow her to kick Ben in the emotional balls when she finally decides it's time to break up and move on.
Although Horror Hotline … Big Head Monster generally follows a normal visual structure of edited continuity, the movie often presents events as seen through the film camera of one of the characters, so the movie occasionally displays the characteristics of a found-footage movie. Arguably, the filmmakers are paying homage to the found-footage genre, which had just taken off at the time thanks to the original Blair Witch Project (1999 / trailer). Unluckily, the general effect comes across less as an artistic decision on part of the filmmakers that a desperate attempt to solve some budgetary problems. A bit more effective, even as it garners guffaws, is the not-so-oblique CGI (?) reference to the baby-in-space found in 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968 / trailer), this time round with a big-headed baby.
The movie simply makes no sense. Chris, for example, is actually dead, so why does he even call up and pique their investigative interest if they shouldn't investigate? The baby, when born, is taken away in a cage by Men in Black — are we seriously to believe they then just put the cage in an easily accessible derelict building, close to a school full of nosy kids, and forgot about it? And if they did forget about the big head baby, who brings the big bowl of rice that is always in front of the cage? And why is the mother, who died at childbirth, faceless and floating around in a bloody flowered cocktail dress (instead of, say, a bloody hospital gown). What does Sam have to do with the entire story, and why does he survive and others don't? Is the evil baby immune to all religions, or only Islam? Where does Ben disappear to at the end? And… and… and…
Ah, hell. Just believe it: Horror Hotline … Big Head Monster is an incoherent mess that makes about as much sense as the blathering of Trump at his recent press conferences — but, to give credit where credit is due, is at least a bit more interesting and convincing. There is one effectively chilling scene in which Mavis "hears" the horrifying birth of the baby, but one good scene cannot save a movie.
Lastly, while the DVD that we have looks official, we have to assume – actually: we hope – we were suckered into buying a bootleg, otherwise we really cannot explain the suck-ass quality of the transfer: pixelated, the colors blah, and images blurry. Truth told, however, the lousy transfer quality Horror Hotline … Big Head Monster somehow complimented the lousy film itself, which is one of the kind of movies that you should only watch in a group with a lot of beer and weed, otherwise you might find yourself getting angry. Were the film an English-language film, it would surely gain fame as a so-bad-it's-fun movie, but being a Hong Kong product it shall probably forever remain a fringe displeasure, like "fragrant meat".
As an extra, the DVD offers two endings: the original one, and an alternative one. Neither offers a decent, satisfying resolution, as they both are relatively incoherent and aggravatingly open-ended. Like the film itself, and MAGA Republicans, both endings suck.
A
name that does not need an introduction: if you do not know who Barbara
Steele is, then you don't know horror films. She was, and is, one of
the great Scream Queens of the silver screen, though the breadth of the
films she made over the course of her career is broader than just the
genre films for which she is best remembered. But then, with but one or
two exceptions, it is within the genre sphere that her best films were
made, including more than one classic.
Born
on 29 December 1937 in Birkenhead, Cheshire, Barbara [Winifred] Steele
studied art at the Chelsea Art School and in Paris at the Sorbonne, even
as she worked in film. Signed by the Rank Organisation as an art
student, she began appearing in minor film and TV roles in the late
1950s. Her contract was sold to 20th Century Fox in 1960, and soon
thereafter she abandoned her contract for Italy, where she became famous
primarily for her numerous, mostly Gothic horror movies, including some
classics. By 1969, she was married to the American screenwriter James Poe
(4 Oct 1921 – 24 Jan 1980) and living in California. The couple had one
child, Jonathan, and divorced in 1973 (some sources say 1978). Her
acting jobs became less and her parts smaller, and she began producing
television projects — highly successful ones. She hasn't been seen
onscreen in a "real" film since 2014.
And
now, enjoy Part II of our typically meandering and all-over-the-place career
review on a true Babe of Yesteryear and Scream Queen extraordinaire.
The plot: "Gay (Peggy Cummins) and Pelham (Donald Sindem [9 Oct 1923 – 12 Sep 2014] of Rentadick [1972 / trailer]) Butterworth, a young couple expecting to inherit a small fortune through a legacy, imagine they will be able to pay off their many debts and still maintain their large house. They discover, however, that the legacy stipulates that only the wife can receive a small allowance as long as her husband is alive or their marriage is intact. At first, Gay and Pelham take in an odd assortment of lodgers to pay off the debts, but, because no one pays rent, a divorce is arranged with the understanding that the couple will remarry as soon as possible. A misunderstanding makes the divorce seem more permanent, but everything is resolved when Pelham becomes Gay's paying guest in the house. [TCM]"
A scene from
Your Money or Your Wife:
A mostly forgotten film, the title of which was reused in 1972 for a television movie (full film) that shares none of the plot points and is probably just as forgotten.
Your Money or Your Wife was directed by a forgotten but respected Anthony Simmons (16 Dec 1922 – 22 Jan 2016), written by a forgotten Ronald Jeans (10 Mar 1887 – 16 May 1973), and based on a forgotten stage play by Jeans titled Count Your Blessings that originally hit the stage in 1951. Barbara Steele, who gets prominent credit on the film's poster, is on hand to play a character named Juliet Frost — that's her in pink more-or-less lying across Pelham's lap on the poster and film still further above. On the poster, Georgina Cookson ([19 Dec 1918 – 1 Oct 2011] of The Woman Who Wouldn't Die [1965 / trailer]) is to the left....
According to David Parkinson at Radio Times, "Nice title, shame about the movie. This is a farce in every sense of the word [...]. Both screenwriter Ronald Jeans and director Anthony Simmons seemed to think that an abundance of slapstick, a little innuendo and bags of mugging would be enough to have the audience in convulsions. Tune in just to see how wrong they were."
Aside from that of Barbara Steele, the most noteworthy name of this movie is Peggy Cummings (18 Dec 1925 – 29 Dec 2017), at least for fans of classic film noir. Ms. Cummings, an Irish actress, appeared in an extremely limited amount of American movies in her day, but one is a true classic: Gun Crazy, from 1950, her last US movie, which was selected in 1998 for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". She plays the female and definitely the more trigger-happy half of the film's anti-hero duo — and the inspiration for the movie original title, Deadly Is the Female.
Trailer to
Gun Crazy (1950):
Flaming Star
(1960, dir. Don Siegel)
The one that got away? (Big question mark here.) Released 16 December 1960, a good four months after the next Barbara Steele film we look at, this is a film that she started and allegedly quit, which quite possibly was one of the dominoes that led to her subsequent fame as a Queen of Horror.
Trailer to
Flaming Star:
Prior to this film, Ms. Steele had been under contract with The Rank Organisation, which had put her in most of her past films. (See, in Part I: Bachelor of Hearts [1958], Sapphireand Upstairs and Downstairs [both 1959].) Then Rank sold her contract to 20th Century Fox — and Steele was incongruously cast as the lead female opposite some guy named Elvis Presley (8 Jan 1935 – 16 Aug 1977) in a Don Siegel (26 Oct 1912 – 20 Apr 1991) Western titled Flaming Star, in which the guy (Elvis) ended up giving one of his best acting performances. (Siegel, you might remember, also assisted some guy named "Bush" Fabian — below, not from that film — to do his "best" performance the previous year in the Western Hound Dog Man [1959 / full film].)
Fabian sings
Hound Dog Man:
Over at House of Freudstein, the request proffered to Ms. Steele to confirm the quote, in regard to Flaming Star and Hollywood, that she said "I went to Hollywood with very little and came back with nothing," was met with the response: "I can't remember what's real or not myself, but that sounds about right."
Ms. Steele was far less circumspect when talking to Diabolique Magazine in 2012, where she says: "[20th Century Fox] broke the contract when I walked out of a movie they put me in. The whole thing blew up into an enormous scandal in Hollywood. It was an Elvis Presley movie: Flaming Swords or something. I had a tremendous fight on the third day of shooting, drove straight to the airport and flew to New York, and called them up the next morning. 'I won't be in make-up,' I said, 'because I'm here in New York.' They said was it snowing or something! Then they added: 'Come back or we'll sue you for the money we gave you.' 'Well, do,' I told them, 'because I've spent it and I'm never coming back.' That was it. They let me go because it was easier..."
The movie itself, based on Clair Huffaker's 1958 novel Flaming Lance, had been scripted by its respected screenwriter Nunnally Johnson (5 Dec 1897 – 25 Mar 1977) as a vehicle for Marlon Brando [Elvis History Blog]. The iconic Andy Warhol image of Elvis brandishing a gun (one version below) comes from this film.
According to Elvis History Blog, in the book A Siegel Film: An Autobiography, which came out two years after the director's death in 1991, Don Siegel manages to be both insulting and consolatory in his explanation of the events behind Ms. Steele's departure from the film. Steele was put into the film by the studio, to the displeasure of the film's producer, David Weisbart (21 Jan 1915 – 21 Jul 1967), who noted that not only had she "very little experience and is not a good actress", but that he didn't "like the leading lady towering over Elvis" — which is exactly what she did. Siegel, in turn, said he "didn't want her in the picture [...] to protect Presley" and because he "feared Elvis' reaction when he was asked to stand on an apple box to be eye-level with her". But Ms Steele was sent to the shoot, with "blonde hair, a slight stoop and a Western accent straight from Birmingham". Siegel goes on to say, "I liked her personally, but her woeful lack of experience and strange Western accent, plus her height, proved her undoing." He was supposedly subsequently charged to give the actress the news that she was dumped — but to his own astonishment, she responded that she had found the role "uncomfortable" and that she was "happy" to be off the picture. [Elvis History Blog]
She was subsequently replaced by a young, beautiful, and perfectly coffered Barbara Eden (of The Amazing Dobermans [1976 / full film]).*
*All the "concern" seems a bit out of place when you consider that the lead female role that Barbara Eden eventually played in Flaming Star is not even Elvis's girl: she is the girlfriend of his brother. In a total change of pace for an Elvis film, the man himself has no girlfriend or love interest in the movie.
Some Guy named Elvis sings
Summer Kisses, Winter Tears*:
* From the film, sort of... but for a better version by Julee Cruise (1 Dec 1956 – 9 Jun 2022), set to scenes from the Thai art western Tears of the Black Tiger (2000 / trailer), go here . Summer Kisses, Winter Tears, like the song Britches, was cut from the final release of the movie.
In any event, the plot of the Elvis film that does not feature Barbara Steele, as supplied by Brian W. Fairbanks, who thinks "Presley is effectively cast as Pacer Burton, a half-breed torn between two peoples": "When the Kiowa Indians launch an attack on the neighboring white settlers, burning homes and savagely murdering the people, the Burton homestead is spared. Though the family is headed by a white man (John McIntire [27 Jun 1907 – 30 Jan 1991]), his wife (Dolores Del Rio [3 Aug 1904 – 11 Apr 1983]) is a Kiowa. One son (Steve Forrest [29 Sep 1925 – 18 May 2013] of Phantom of the Rue Morgue [1954 / trailer]) is white, but the youngest (Elvis the Pelvis) is a half-breed. Suddenly, the whites, who had accepted the family and welcomed them into their homes, turn against them, threatening to shoot the half-breed should he set foot on their property. Meanwhile, the Kiowas hope to enlist Pacer in their cause. 'If a half-breed white leaves his father's people to fight for his mother's people, it will make the strongest magic I have,' the chief tells the troubled lad, but he refuses to join their battle. When his mother is shot by a white man and dies after being refused treatment by the white doctor, Pacer's long held but hidden feelings that he never belonged in the white man's world suddenly surface. He abandons his home and joins his mother's people on the warpath. But he remains an outsider, painfully aware that as a half-breed, no matter whose side he takes, he is always fighting himself."
The movie does not end with Elvis riding off into the sunset with his brother's girlfriend...
The image above, btw, is an AI-generated artistic depiction of Barbara Eden, uncensored prints of which are available at Glossy Treats.
Cut free from Flaming Star, Barbara Steele ended up starring in this classic horror film instead — and the rest, as one says, is history.
The Italian title is La maschera del demonio, but the movie has been released and re-released with a good dozen other titles, the most well-known one probably being Black Sunday, the title bestowed upon the shorter, re-cut English-language version (83 minutes vs. 87) released by AIP, complete with a new soundtrack from Les Baxter (instead of the original by Roberto Nicolosi [16 Nov 1914 – 4 Apr 1989]).
In what can only be seen as a truly incongruent double feature, Black Sunday was often paired with The Little Shop of Horrors (1960 / trailer, see Dick Miller Pt. 1) when released in the US.
As justification for its new title, the A.I.P. edit opens with a narration that says something to the effect of "One day in each century, it is said that Satan walks among us. That day is called 'Black Sunday'." (The title Black Sunday, btw, was reused some 17 years for a half-way decent thriller [1977 / trailer] that has absolutely nothing in common with the Steele film.)
La maschera del demonio was the "official" feature film directorial debut of the cinematographer Mario Bava, who, prior to Black Sunday, did uncredited directorial work on a variety of other fun films: Riccardo Freda's I Vampiri a.k.a. Lust of the Vampire (1957 / trailer), the first Italian horror film of the sound era; Paul Heusch's La morte viene dallo spazio a.k.a. The Day the Sky Exploded (1957 / trailer), the first Italian science fiction film of the sound era; Petro Francisci's Ercole e la regina di Lidia a.k.a. Hercules Unchained (1959 / trailer), with Steve Reeves ([21 Jan 1926 – 1 Max 2000], below not from the film); Freda's cheesy sci-fi horror Caltiki il mostro immortale a.k.a. Caltiki, the Immortal Monster (1959 / trailer); and Jacques Tourneur's rent-paying La battaglia di Maratona a.k.a. The Giant of Marathon (1959 / trailer, also with Steve Reeves, of Jail Bait [1954]).
The generally accepted lore is that Mario Bava wanted to do a horror film with British leads because of the resounding success of Hammer's Dracula (1958 / trailer), the coattails upon which he wanted to ride, and that he pulled Barbara Steele into the project to play the dual roles of good gal Princess Asa Vajda and bad gal Katia Vajda after seeing a photo spread of Steele in Life magazine; how he came to his British lead male actor, a still unknown John Richardson (of One Million Years BC [1966 / trailer], Umberto Lenzi's Eyeball [1975 / trailer], The Church [1989 / trailer] and so much more), like Steele a former Rank Organisation contract player, is the topic of no apocryphal tale. Richardson's contract with Rank, however, like that of Steele, had likewise been sold to Fox and he, in search of work, had likewise gone to Italy.
Black Sunday is loosely based on Gogol's short story Viy (which you can read here); and while Bava wrote the original four-page treatment, the eventual screenplay, written by multiple authors credited and uncredited, supposedly has little in common with Bava's outline.
Long story short: Released in August of 1962, Black Sunday may not have been a critical success in its day, but while it was not that big of a financial hit in Italy, it raked in the money in the US. It was simply banned in the UK well into 1968, when it was finally released as Revenge of the Vampire. Since then, the film has long earned its just reputation as a classic Gothic horror film, if not a masterpiece of horror, and is justifiably found on many a person's "Best of Horror" list — ours, too. And that despite some at times truly questionable acting and dubbing, which luckily enough are simply and easily overcome by the mood, atmosphere, production design, and cinematography.
Black Sunday is one of those films — like, for example, Christensen's Witchcraft (1922 / full film below), Whale's Frankenstein (1931 / trailer), Romero's Night off the Living Dead (1968) and Tobe Hooper's Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974 / trailer) — that anyone who claims to be a "true horror fan" has to see at least once, regardless of which cut. (We ourselves prefer the uncut English-language "European version" marketed at one point as The Mask of Satan.) And like most true masterpieces of horror, it is a movie that one can watch with non-fans of horror, who will likely also find it a good film.
The plot, as found at Ancient Slumber: "In 1630 Moldovia, a witch named Asa (Barbara Steele) and her paramour Javuto (Arturo Dominici [2 Jan 1916 – 7 Sep 1992] ofCastle of Blood [1964] and Investigation of a Citizen above Suspicion [1970 / trailer]) are sentenced to die by Asa's brother. Before being burnt at the stake, a metal mask with spikes on the inside is hammered onto Asa's face as she curses her brother and his descendents. Two centuries later, a pair of travellers [Dr. Choma Kruvajan (Andrea Checchi) and his assistant, Dr. Andrej Gorobec (John Richardson)] waiting for their coach to be repaired wander upon Asa's tomb. After observing the death mask and crucifix placed upon her grave one of the travellers is disturbed by a bat and accidentally smashes the objects placed there for protection, cutting his hand in the process and dripping blood on Asa's corpse. Outside the pair meet the beautiful Katia (again played by Steele), who tells the men that she lives in a supposedly haunted castle with her father Prince Vajda (Ivo Garrani [6 Feb 1924 – 25 Mar 2015] of Atom Age Vampire [1960 / trailer]) and brother Constantine (Enrico Olivieri [14 Dec 1939 – 29 Jan 2022] in his last film). Meanwhile, thanks to the traveller's blood Asa has awoken and uses her powers to resurrect Javuto from his grave. Now looking to take revenge on her brother's descendents, Asa and Javuto go to Prince Vajda's castle in an attempt to drink Katia's blood and gain immortality. [...]"
"From the opening scenes as a witch is burned at the stake, Black Sunday has its audience in the palm of its hand. The ritualistic horror of that opening gives way to the mythical lore of the vampire as it is unleashed upon a small village. From the gorgeous gothic design to the ominous lighting, Black Sunday is one of Mario Bava's absolute finest horror films. Maybe it is imperfect, but that's even more reason to love the chills and frights that Black Sunday provides. [Cineccentric]"
Trivia: Neither the voice of Steele nor that of Richardson is the actual voice of either in any of the existing versions of the film.
Mario Bava's son, director Lamberto Bava (see: Demons[1985], Per Sempre [1987], Ghost House [1988] & Graveyard Disturbance [1987]), retooled the basic plot of Black Sunday in 1989 for an Italian TV horror film titled Sabbath: The Mask of Satan (Italian trailer below). That film is "often billed as Demons 5and a loose remake of Black Sunday,
but nowhere near as bananas as the former nor as beautifully gothic as
the latter, [...] is still just surreal and Italian enough to be pretty
entertaining. [Tony the Terror]"
Trailer to Lamberto Bava's
Sabbath: The Mask of Satan:
The German poster below, which tries to sell the movie as a pure Dracula flick, with Javuto (Arturo Dominici) going for the jugular of a blonde, is by the great German poster artist Hans Braun (1925 – 8 Sept 2011). Born in Wiemar, he moved to West Germany in 1953, where he did his first movie poster the following year. He soon became one of the busiest movie poster illustrators of Germany, doing roughly 800 posters by the time he retired in the 1970s. Today, he is virtually forgotten.
"There was a depth to her. On the surface she was a beautiful brunette woman. Beneath that — and you could almost get poetic here looking into her eyes — you could see layer, upon layer, upon layer. I could probably best, and inadequately, describe it as a kind of exotic mystery."
In what was perhaps a case of kismet, after Black Sunday (1960), Barbara Steele's next film job, The Pit and the Pendulum, released 23 August 1961, was for another cult director and producer, the great Roger Corman.
The Pit and the Pendulum is the second of his famed Edgar Allan Poe adaptations, all of which but for one feature Vincent Price (27 May 1911 — 25 Oct 1993) — it was preceded by House of Usher (1960 / trailer) and followed by The Premature Burial (1962 / trailer [without Price]), Tales of Terror (1962 / trailer), The Raven (1963 / trailer), The Haunted Palace (1963 / trailer), The Masque of the Red Death (1964) and The Tomb of Ligeia (1964 / trailer) — and Corman pulled her into the project because of Black Sunday: "I thought she was wonderful in it. I hired her simply off the performance in Black Sunday. Barbara was a good actress and very beautiful. There was also a dark tone to her just as Vincent was a leading man with a little quirkiness. I thought there was sort of a dark mysterious quality behind Barbara's performance. [...] She was very cooperative and a good actress. [...] Barbara had a working-class British accent, which I had not anticipated. All of the characters in The Pit and the Pendulum were aristocrats or upper class. So, I brought in a dialogue coach. He worked with her for the picture, to get the accent I was looking for. [Latin Horror]"
The script, based on the barest of bones of Poe's eponymous bare-boned short story from 1842, was supplied by Richard Matheson (20 Feb 1926 – 23 Jun 2013), whose excellent book I Am Legend became an Italian Vincent Price vehicle in 1964, The Last Man on Earth; Matheson later also scripted the over-rated Hammer film The Devil Rides Out (1968) and Spielberg's excellent TV movie, Duel (1972). His film kept the pit and the pendulum of the original tale, but little else.
"[The Pit and the Pendulum] remains one of [Corman]'s most frightening achievements, generating a palpable sense of dread within its opening minutes with help from Les Baxter's bone-chilling score. It is also one of American International Picture's best-looking productions [...]. Richard Matheson's script is surprisingly innovative, adapting Poe's suspenseful tale told by a single nameless protagonist into a full-blown gothic drama with multiple characters and elements of mystery, romance, and supernatural horror. In addition, Vincent Price delivers one of his greatest performances here as the ill-fated Don Nicholas Medina, a deeply troubled character who alternates between profound melancholy and all-consuming madness. And last but certainly not least, it has the distinction of being the first American horror film featuring the beguiling Mistress of Menace, Barbara Steele. [Cinebeats]"
And the plot? The AFIhas a detailed synopsis: "In sixteenth-century Spain, Francis Bernard (John Kerr [15 Nov 1931 – 2 Feb 2013]) journeys to the foreboding castle of Nicholas Medina (Price), the husband of Francis's recently deceased sister, Elizabeth (Steele). Francis is told that his sister, although very much in love with Nicholas, had become increasingly depressed by the gloomy atmosphere of the castle and had spent most of her time in the dungeons built by Nicholas's father during the Inquisition. One night, after locking herself inside an iron box in the torture chamber, she died of fright. The explanation fails to satisfy Francis, and he decides to remain for a few days. Gradually it becomes apparent that Nicholas is obsessed with the thought that he may have buried his wife alive, a fate that befell his adulterous mother (Mary Menzies [15 Feb 1929 – 8 Mar 2017]). One night, Nicholas hears a woman's voice calling his name, and he follows it to the burial room where Elizabeth, very much alive, rises from her coffin. She is joined by Dr. Leon (Antony Carbone [15 Jun 1925 – 7 Oct 2020] of The Creature from the Haunted Sea [1961 / trailer], The Last Woman on Earth [1960 / trailer] and A Bucket of Blood [1959]), Nicholas's closest friend, and, as Nicholas's mind snaps, the two lovers gloat over their plot to drive him mad and inherit his wealth. The crazed Nicholas suddenly assumes his father's identity, battles with Dr. Leon, who falls to his death in the pendulum pit, and locks his unfaithful wife in the iron box. Francis enters the chamber and is seized by the insane Nicholas and lashed to a table under a swinging, razor-sharp pendulum. But before the blade reaches him, he is rescued by Nicholas's sister, Catherine (Luana Anders [12 May 1938 – 21 Jul 1996] of American Strays [1996], The Killing Kind [1973 / trailer] and Dementia 13 [1963, with William Campbell]), and the butler, Maximillian (Patrick Westwood [10 Dec 1924 – 21 Apr 2017]). In the struggle, Nicholas meets the same fate as Dr. Leon, when he falls into the pit. Catherine decides to seal up the torture chamber forever — unaware that imprisoned in the iron box is the terror-stricken Elizabeth."
"Price is on his usual top form, gracious and possibly hiding madness behind that charming smile, while Kerr and Carbone pitch their performances just perfectly, playing more level-headed characters without ever being overshadowed by that magnificent central performance. Anders is a ray of loveliness in a rather dark and dire environment, and Steele is given another role that makes the most of her haunting beauty. [For It Is Man's Number]"
For those of us raised on the after-school "Creature Features" of yesteryear, we are familiar with The Pit and the Pendulum including a somewhat nonsensical prologue mostly unrelated to the rest of the film featuring Luana Anders in a madhouse: not part of the original cinema release, it was tacked on later when the film was sold to TV and it needed some additional running time to properly fit in the commercial breaks.
In general, The Pit and the Pendulum is considered as one of Corman's best (if also somewhat campier) Poe films, but of course there is always a dissenting voice somewhere — for example 366 Weird Movies, which, incorrectly says Steele is dubbed: "[...] The Price/Steele pairing in The Pit and Pendulum should have been a star teaming worthy of the Karloff/Lugosi collaborations of the 1930s. Unfortunately, Steele is wasted (and worse, dubbed) as the doomed (and believed dead) unfaithful wife-in-waiting. [...] Pendulum is an eclectic low budget genre soaper, sloppily utilizing elements from numerous Poe stories. Steele isn't the only wasted talent. Reliable character actors Luana Anders and John Kerr, poorly directed, come off as surprisingly stiff and mechanical. At the polar opposite is Price at his hammy worst. His performance here is a cringe-inducing caricature. Crosby's atmospheric lens work, Baxter's throbbing score, a predictable but still effective finale, and, briefly, Steele as a smoothly ornamented, darkly mysterious Tahitian pearl (barely) save Pendulum from being a total disaster."
The German poster above, which really isn't all that spectacular, is by the artist Heinz Schulz-Neudamm (7 Jul 1899 – 13 May 1969), who was born Paul Heinz Otto Schulz in the town of Neudamm, Germany, which is now the Polish town of Dębno. Among his best-known posters is that for Fritz Lang's Metropolis (1927 / movie), which became the most expensive film poster in the world when one of the four known copies fetched $690,000 on auction.
Alfred Hitchcock Presents: Beta Delta Gamma (1961)
Normally we don't look at TV projects, but in this case we'll make an exception: Alfred Hitchcock Presents (1955 – 65), after all, is up there alongside the original Twilight Zone (1959 – 1964) as one of best anthology series on television ever.
Beta Delta Gamma the sixth episode of the seventh season, aired on 14 November 1961, and Barbara Steele appears to play a character named Phyllis.
The episode was written by Calvin Clements Sr. (14 Feb 1915 – 11 Mar 1997), whose only filmscript of note is that for the relatively forgotten, star-studded western Firecreek (1968 / trailer).Beta Delta Gamma was directed by TV mainstay Alan Crossland Jr (19 July 1918 – 18 Dec 2001).
Beta Delta Gamma also features the debut of another Barbara, namely Barbara Harris (25 Jul 1935 – 21 Aug 2018), later found in fun stuff like Oh Dad, Poor Dad, Mamma's Hung You in the Closet and I'm Feelin' So Sad (1967 / trailer), Nice Girls Don't Explode (1987 / trailer), and Grosse Point Blank (1997 / trailer).
Oh Dad, Poor Dad, Mamma's Hung You in the Closet and I'm Feelin' So Sad:
The plot: "Mark (Duke Howard of Murderer's Row [1966 / trailer]) and Alan (Burt Brinkerhoff) are frat boys. During a party at a beachfront frat house, Mark challenges Alan to a drinking contest. Alan drinks a full pitcher of beer, but Mark refuses to do the same. Alan becomes angry, but he and Mark eventually pass out. Alan's frat brothers decide to play a joke on him by injecting Mark with a substance to make him appear dead. They place a bloody weapon in Alan's hand, hoping that when he wakes up he'll think he killed Mark. The pranks goes off according to plan until Alan decides to cover up the 'murder'. He buries Mark's body on the beach. When the prank is revealed to him, he desperately returns to the beach. Unfortunately the high tide has washed away all traces of Mark's grave. (Hitchcock Zone)"
Burt Brinkerhoff went on to a long and successful career as a TV director, during which he occasionally took a detour to make a fun, bad feature film like Acapulco Gold (1976 / trailer) and Dogs (1977 / trailer below).
%20%E2%80%94%20Scaled%20(32_).png){kind=tracking}
%2010.jpg)
* That she does not exactly shine is something Haji herself seems to have later felt, going by her relatively circumspect statement she made about the movie when talking to Shock Cinema: "I will limit myself as far as doing certain things, and some of the stuff they did in that film was a little too funky for me. I liked my part, but I don't think I did a very good job with it." 
* Max Thayer makes for one unappetizing plaything. Generically handsome and with a nicely tight ass, he nevertheless remains unappealing. His total lack of any attempt at acting doesn't help any, either. Throughout the movie, Thayer proves himself unable to convey a single emotion convincingly — he can't even make "You bitch!" sound insulting or angry. Nevertheless, in real life he had a mild career — he followed up Ilsa with Planet of Dinosaurs (1977 / trailer) and Stephan C. Apostolof's Hot Ice (1977 / song), and eventually managed to become a lead in Philippine-shot flotsam like Phantom Soldiers (1987 / trailer), No Dead Heroes (1986 / full movie), No Retreat No Surrender 2 (1987 / full movie), The Retrievers (1982 / trailer), and and and... 
Satin and Velvet are perhaps the two strongest female characters of the movie, something they manage to convey even when completely naked and fully oiled. They can take and deliver a beating better than "a real man", as one sees in a scene that ends with each of them holding a testicle in their respective hands. Whether or not they are a loving couple or just almost identical-looking, loyal, ass-kicking assistants is revealed towards the end, and it almost comes across as tragic.* (Almost.)
.jpg)
.png)
..jpg)
