A Wasted Life: Babes of Yesteryear – Uschi Digard, Part X: 1977

Wednesday, May 13, 2020

Babes of Yesteryear – Uschi Digard, Part X: 1977

Babes of Yesteryear: a wasted life's irregular and P.I. feature that takes a look at the filmographies of the underappreciated actresses cum sex bombs of low-culture cinema of the past. Some may still be alive, others not.

As the photo (maybe) and blog-entry title above reveal, we're currently [still] looking at the films of one of the ultimate cult babes ever, a woman who needs no introduction to any and all red-blooded American cis gender, tendentially hetero male whose hormonal memory goes further back than the start of the 80s: the great Uschi Digard.*

As The Oak Drive-In puts it: "With her long hair, Amazonian build & beautiful natural looks (usually devoid of make-up), nobody seems to personify that 60s & early 70s sex appeal 'look' better than [Uschi Digard]. She had a presence that truly was bigger than life — a mind-bending combination of hippie Earth Mother looks and a sexual wildcat. […] She always seemed to have a smile on her face and almost seemed to be winking at the camera and saying 'Hey, it's all in fun.' Although she skirted around the edges at times, she never preformed hardcore…"

Today, Uschi Digard is still alive, happily married (for over 50 years), and last we heard retired in Palm Springs, CA. To learn everything you ever wanted to know about her, we would suggest listening to the great interview she gave The Rialto Report in 2013. You can find her on that predatory thing known as Facebook.

Please note: we make no guarantee for the validity of the release dates given… or of the info supplied, for that matter.

Herewith we give a nudity warning: naked babes and beefcake are highly likely to be found in our Babes of Yesteryear entries. If such sights offend thee, well, either go to another blog or pluck thy eyes from thee...

Go here for

Uschi Digard, Part I: 1968-69

Uschi Digard, Part II: 1970, Part I

Uschi Digard, Part III: 1970, Part II

Uschi Digard, Part IV: 1971, Part I

Uschi Digard, Part V: 1971, Part II

Uschi Digard, Part VI: 1972

Uschi Digard, Part VII: 1973-74

Uschi Digard, Part VIII: 1975

Uschi Digard, Part IX: 1976

Fantasm Comes Again

(1977, dir. "Eric Ram")

Richard Franklyn's Fantasm (1976, see Part IX) proved such a success that a sequel was promptly made — but not by Richard Franklyn. No, this time around Australian producer Antony I. Ginnane hired "Eric Ram" instead, who made his feature film debut with the movie, which was written by "Robert Derriere". For all subsequent film projects, however, the director, Australian Colin Eggleston (23 Sept 1941 – 10 Aug 2002), would use his real name instead of "Eric Ram". Presented in Moanaround.

Theme to

Fantasm Comes Again:

Eggleston is probably best known for his nature-gone-wild flick Long Weekend (1978 / trailer), starring his wife Briony Behets, which was later remade by Jamie Blanks in 2008 (trailer), starring Jesus (otherwise known as Jim Caviezel). Among his films to date, Blanks also directed the slasher Valentine (2001). Producer Antony I. Ginnane, on the other hand, has a yitload of notable and/or successful genre film production credits to his name, including Screamers (1995), one fun genre film amongst many.

The image directly above as well as below the title come from the great website, Temple of Schlock, which, regrettably, seems no longer to get new blog entries. The web was a better place while that blog was still active…

Just as in the first movie, the framing sequences of Fantasm Comes Again were shot Down Under while the soft core stuff was shot in the US with the current crème-de-la-crème of the (mostly) soft-core porn scene and assorted future unknowns. The film was not a hit. John Holmes appears as a glorified extra in the background because, supposedly, "He refused to get into the pool" — which is why William Margold has the pool tryst. In any event, there's a lot of nekkid flesh in this movie, male and female, so if you fear the sight of dangling sausage, you probably shouldn't watch it. But should you want to watch it, Fantasm Comes Again can be found on many of the common virus-infected porn tube sites, so look around.

Digital Fix, however, sees other reasons to skip the flick, saying: "Fantasm Comes Again was much less successful than its predecessor. The use of two actors instead of one in the linking sequences makes the film much longer — and their awful acting doesn't help much either. Also the presentation of the ten episodes as apparent fact rather than fantasy makes them rather more uneasy to watch — and that includes another rape scene, featuring American exploitation veteran Rainbeaux Smith* (at a drive-in cinema that just happens to be showing Fantasm). Ginnane turns up in the last episode in a monk's habit."

* Cult icon Cheryl Lynn "Rainbeaux" Smith (6 June 1955 – 25 Oct 2002) — of, among other movie, Lemora (1973 / trailer), Drum (1976 / trailer), Massacre at Central High (1976 / trailer), and Cinderella (1977 / trailer) — "died in the early morning hours on October 25, 2002 of complications from liver disease and hepatitis after a two-decade struggle with heroin addiction." That's her below with some unidentified dude from a May 1976 Penthouse layout called "Easy Rider".

The wrap-around plot used to frame the "real stories": "Cub reporter Libbie (Angela Menzies-Wills, also found somewhere in the Ozsploiters Nightmares [1980 / trailer]) is given the job of writing her newspaper's sex advice column. A venerable, cynical old hack Harry (Clive Hearne [8 May 1931 – 8 Nov 2003]) does a Miss Lonelyhearts on her by telling her about the wide-ranging tales of sexual experiences and events that have been sent in to him by the rag's readers. Naturally as Harry comments on the heartbalm letters, we see the experiences illustrated visually. [Oz Movies]"

Although some situations are different from the first film, as Mondo Digital points out, the movie follows the old adage of "if it ain't broke, don't fix it", right down to Uschi having a lesbian role in the hay (literally)….

The individual segments…

"Silence Please": Sex amidst the stacks at a library when the librarian takes advantage of some gals reading the Kama Sutra. A young Johnny Legend (of Bugbuster [1998]), credited under his real name, "Martin Margulies", is amongst the patrons.

"Workout": Coach Rick Cassidy, aka Jim Cassidy (22 July 1943 – 23 Dec 2013), above, who couldn't act his way out of a paper bag but always looks great naked (see, for example, Pat Rocco's downer gay porn drama A Deep Compassion [1972 / scenes], poster below), has uncomfortably under-age-looking gymnast Michael Barton jump around naked on the trampoline before stripping down to join her for an oily massage. (This is the episode that inspired former doctor Larry Nassar to take up sports medicine.)

"Double Feature": Another badly dated misogynistic rape sequence in which No once again means Yes! when Cheryl "Rainbeaux" Smith gets the rape she actually wanted in a van at a drive-in where Rene Bond's rape sequence of the Fantasm (1976, see Part IX) happens to be on the screen.

"Going Up": A dorky Bill (Herb Layne) is first shocked at some lesbian passion between Penny ("Suzy A. Star") and Sally (Amanda Smith) before joining in the fun for a three-way in a stuck elevator.

"Straw Dolls": "Oh, I just love your breasts! They're like watermelons!" Leslie (Uschi Digart) bares her assets alongside Bianca's (Dee Dee Levitt) lesser assets for a lesbian roll in the hay when the horse-riding duo take refuge from the rain in a barn. Western character actor Dee Cooper ([25 May 1920 – 14 Dec 1989] of Scream [1981 / trailer]), one-time owner of the Paramount Ranch, shows up as a farmer with a pitchfork.

"The Good Old Gang at the Office": Con Covert (1935-90), who in real life supposedly died two days after winning the California State lottery, throws an orgy at his house for his employees. As (almost) always, he finds the time to do drag yet again (see: A Scream in the Streets [1973 / trailer] — and almost any other film he worked on).

"The Kiss of Life": The pool sequence famous for having a clothed John Holmes, who doesn't get into the pool. Instead, early Clown Prince of Porn William Margold shows his family jewels underwater as he romps in the water with three women. Titus Moede ([5 March 1938 – 6 Feb 2001] of The Thrill Killers [1964 / trailer], Rat Pfink a Boo Boo [1966 / trailer below] and more) plays the waiter with the slippery fingers.

Trailer to

Rat Pfink a Boo Boo:

"Family Reunion": Candy Samples (12 Apr 1928 – 23 Sept 2019) returns to play Mom again, whose waterbed action with Uncle Fred (Al Ward) turns her daughter Virginia (Nancy Mann) on so much she joins in the action. Lots of close-ups of Samples's at the time supposedly only 49-year-old love pillows.

"Overdrive": Sterling (Jesse Adams) does some pretty fancy driving of his red convertible when his main squeeze Carol (Christine De Shaffer) does oral duty to his stickshift.

"True Confession": Imogene (Serena) goes to church again, this time to confess her sins, and ends up taking it from by behind from the church janitor Joe (Michael Karnitz). Serena, once famous for never saying no to any sex activity to be filmed, was also one of the most popular porn stars of the Golden Age by the time she simply disappeared. She's since reappeared, but not on screen: go here to the Rialto Report.

Secret Dreams of Mona Q

(1977, dir. Charles Kaufman)

"Marriage without fantasy is like a feast without wine."

Guy de Maupassant

Directed by Charles Kaufman, cinematography by Lloyd Kaufman, and produced by the two combined; one can probably assume they wrote it as well, though it is credited to some one-film wonder named Rolf Schonfeld... It's Sex Troma! As the great Temple of Shock points out, "During the 1970s, before he became known as the producer of The Toxic Avenger (1984 / trailer), Tromeo and Juliet (1997 / trailer) and Class of Nuke 'Em High (1986 / trailer), Troma president and co-founder Lloyd Kaufman dabbled in the New York porno scene. You'll have to hunt around […] because they're certainly not available through the Troma website."

This one, however, is pretty easy to find on DVD, and is also considered to be one of the better (if forgotten) porn entries of the Golden Age. (Odd that so few have ever bothered to write about it — maybe no one had a free hand to do so.) But then, as Charles Kaufman proved well in his next film, the original version of Mother's Day (1980 / trailer below), he could direct a good movie. (Too bad he has directed so few movies in general.) One wonders whether he is as good a baker as filmmaker.

Trailer to the original

Mother's Day (1980):

The possibly now-defunct Uschi Digard website, which if it works again would be found here and was one of the sources we used when compiling our original list of Uschi films, listed this movie in her filmography, as do various other websites, often also claiming she plays the part of "Rebecca" in this East Coast production. But let us set the record straight: No, the titillating West Coast-based actress is not in this movie, and Rebecca is played by an unknown one-shot actress named "Ushi Inger", which contrary to belief, is not an Uschi pseudonym.

But, to grasp at straws, there is a slight link to Uschi, nonetheless: Monique Cardin, the headlining star (she's even named on the poster), supposedly made her un-credited film debut as a "Blonde Secretary" in the Uschi movie Heads or Tails a.k.a. Honey Buns (1973, see Part VII). Unlike Uschi, who didn't do hardcore, Monique, who obviously enough did do hardcore, didn't last long in the business: like so many porn actresses, one day around 1979 and after nine films under diverse names (including the porno oddity Baby Rosemary [1976 / full NSFW film]), she simply disappeared.

In Secret Dreams of Mona Q, Monique Cardin plays the titular Mona McKenzie, the frustrated and ignored wife of Bob McKenzie, who is played by one of our fave Golden Age sausages, Wade Nichols (28 Oct 1946 – 28 Jan 1985), born Dennis Posa. Over at the imdb, Woody Anders supplies the core info about the handsome lad (but the Rialto Report has the full story): "Nichols […] worked as a male escort before making his hardcore gay porn film debut in 1975. Wade subsequently appeared in a handful of both straight and gay X-rated movies alike throughout the mid to late 1970's, with an especially memorable turn in the hardcore classic Barbara Broadcast (1977 / trailer) as the hunky kitchen worker who makes love to C.J. Laing. Moreover, Nichols in 1979 recorded the disco album Like an Eagle for Casablanca Records using the name Dennis Parker and toured Europe to promote said album. Wade also first began playing the character of Police Chief Derek Mallory on the daytime soap opera The Edge of Night (1956-84) in 1979 under the same alias. Alas, Nichols's character was eventually written out of the show due to the fact that Nichols was seriously ill from AIDS. He died at age 38 of complications from AIDS on January 28, 1985. Nichols was survived by his mother, his older brother Richard, and his partner at the time of his death."

Dennis Parker sings

Like an Eagle:

Speaking of the Rialto Report and now deceased working stiff with moustaches: the cast of Secret Dreams of Mona Q includes David Savage (24 Sept 1948 – 15 June 1992), born David Wayne Zinsavage, who, like Wade, was a slim dude who worked both ways and has since been researched by the Rialto Report. (The advert below for In the Heat of the Knight [1976 / trailer] comes from their website.)

But to return the movie that doesn't feature Uschi Digard, The Secret Dreams of Mona Q. Excalibur Filmy has the plot: "Monique Cardin stars in this freaky, funny, fiery look at a marriage on the rocks. Monique plays Mona Q, a woman who just can't seem to keep her husband (Wade Nichols) interested when it comes to sex. She tries everything, but he still prefers staring at magazine centerfolds to ravishing her. Mona is forced to retreat into her fantasies, where she dreams up a series of explosively erotic encounters. Many of her dreams take place in the woods near their house, and we get to watch as these powerfully passionate outdoor pile-ups take place. Among the hottest is a riveting threesome that finds Alexandria (of Doris Wishman's A Night to Dismember [1983 / trailer]) taking on a couple of studs in a rip-roaring threesome. She also joins luscious Sharon Mitchell (of Daughters of Discipline [1978 / full NSFW film] and Feast [1992 / trailer]) for a little lesbian loving out in the forest. Mona also dreams up a strange fantasy segment in which she's a washing machine repairwoman who trysts with her buffed-out black customer. Meanwhile, Mona's husband is having some decadent dreams of his own. He fantasizes about taking on his sassy secretary and two of her gal pals in a freaky group session. The whole thing escalates until we arrive at a climactic dinner party. There, Mona and her husband come to some shattering realizations. Filled with great performances and stunning sirens, this feature still holds a powerful erotic spell."

Over at the imdb, the DVD-addicted lor_ calls the movie "an above-average specimen" and "a free-form fantasy directed by Charles Kaufman and photographed by his brother and Troma chieftain Lloyd Kaufman with attention to detail generally absent from their later non- X-rated product." He adds, "Among Mona's dreams is an interesting wish-fulfillment where she's chief executive of a firm, lording it over her hubby, alternately putting him in bondage or servicing him. She also masturbates with a huge ribbed dildo here, all with wailing saxophone music playing. […] But the best sequence is Wade's fantasy of girls tending to his every need in the office, nude and fitted out comically with gag devices making one a human lamp (guess where the on/off pull-chord is located) and another a human water cooler (again obvious where the spout for filling Dixie cups is situated). Wade signs a series of documents by shooting (off-screen FX) cum on each page instead of his signature."

Were Uschi truly in the movie, lor would surely have pointed her out — as he has with other hand-helpers he has reviewed.

Can I Do It 'til I Need Glasses?

(1977, dir. Robert Levy)

Two years after If You Don't Stop… You'll Go Blind (1975, see Part VIII), director Levy made this sequel, which is now probably known, if at all, primarily for being the feature-film debut of Robin Williams (21 July 1951 – 11 Aug 2014). Uschi Digard "appears for a nanosecond during the opening credits, topless astride an elephant" (photo below), but the truly prominent breasts of the movie are the massively enhanced mounds of LA icon Angelyne (photo further below), who is locally famous, if at all, primarily for being Angelyne. Oddly enough, her famous assets are not emphasized in her small segment.

In regard to Robin Williams' segments, the one which takes place in a courtroom wasn't even in the original release, having been left on the editing room floor. But soon after Mork & Mindy (1978-82) became a hit, the couple of minutes were picked up again and cut back into the movie, which was then re-released as a Robin Williams movie. ("The funniest man on television is now the funniest man in the movies.") A real court case naturally soon followed…

Robin Williams, still alive, in court:

10K Bullets seems to have liked the movie, and says "Can I Do It ‘Till I Need Glasses? revolves around a series of sexual-themed comedy vignettes. The story are all quick and to the point. The pacing of the film is fast and at times chaotic. […] The direction and performance are all more than adequate in conveying the subject at hand. Even though some the situations and jokes in most of the skits are not original and have been used before. They still remain funny even if they are recycled."

DVD Beaver, on the other hand, was not impressed: "Not even intermittently funny, Can I Do It 'til I Need Glasses? is as low-brow as seventies comedy can get. A random series of comedic sketches with no framing device, most of the skits are protracted enactments of jokes that could have been told in two or three sentences. For instance: a husband answers his door and finds a naked man on the doorstep with a bag over his head holding a gun. The husband begs the man not to kill him. The man reveals he's not a robber but a rapist. The punchline: the husband shouts to his wife 'Honey, it's for you.' That's it, end of sketch. It's like R-rated visualizations of pages from those politically incorrect joke books from the sixties and seventies you find on the bookshelf in your uncle's den (which hasn't been remodeled since presumably the seventies). […] Recommended for those who like their humor politically incorrect BUT dated."

Trailer to

Can I Do It 'til I Need Glasses?

Among the jokes DVD Talk thought worth noting: "A Native American girl, sitting outside her teepee, learns from her father how she got the name Broken Rubber. A Confucius-like Chinese man accuses his daughter of dating a Jew; 'What schmuck tell you that?,' she counters. A fat guy tells his girl, 'I really want to get in your pants'; cut to him walking away, wearing her tight pink panties. The great comfort in all this is the knowledge that each tableau will be over in a minute or two. (I did chuckle, though, at a male nudist delivering two coffees and two doughnuts.*)"

* Who is the most popular guy in a nudist colony? The one that can carry two cups of coffee and a dozen doughnuts at the same time. The most popular woman? The one that can eat the 12^th doughnut. [Reddit thread]. Rest assured, anyone who tells jokes like this has never actually been to a nudist colony. Here's one we knew a wee kids...

As typical of the Golden Age of Drive-Ins, and as the 1983 advert above reveals, at least at the Ascot Triple Drive-In in Akron, Ohio, the comedy Can I Do It 'til I Need Glasses? was at one point incongruently screened with a nice variety of forgotten sleazy-sounding titles: House of Shame (probably Olga's House of Shame [1964 / trailer]), Women in Bondage (possibly Monogram's 1943 exploiter/ scene), State Line Motel (possibly the Italo Stateline Motel aka L'ultima chance [1973/ trailer]), and trashmeister Erwin C. Dietrich's The Young Seducers aka Blutjunge Verführerinnen (1971 / full NSFW film) — although we believe the lady shown in the advert might be the pre-overly plasticized Babe of Yesteryear Joyce Gibson/Mandel (10 Mar 1950 – 13 Oct 2016), who isn't in that film...

The Kentucky Fried Movie

(1977, dir. John Landis)

"Never before has the beauty of the sexual act been so crassly exploited!"

The classic amongst the anthology sketch comedy films that flooded the screens in the 70s, a genre that has for the most part died out (the last one we saw, and laughed our heads off at, was the immensely tasteless Movie 43 [2013 / trailer]). Also typical of the times and found in KFM: lots of naked breasts. And P.I. humor.

Trailer to

Kentucky Fried Movie:

As directed by John Landis, who made his directorial debut six years earlier with Schlock! (1971 / trailer), the movie helped launched a directorial career that even survived the death of Vic Morrow and two children during the filming of his segment of The Twilight Zone Movie (1982 / trailer). The scriptwriters — Jim Abrahams, David Zucker and Jerry Zucker — also went on to substantial careers, together and apart, though our favorite movie of theirs, Top Secret! (1984 / trailer), typically enough, was their biggest flop.

"The Kentucky Fried Movie," says Cracked Rear Viewer, "takes guerilla comedy to the extreme. A series of unrelated events, KFM skewers local news, commercials, PSAs (Henry Gibson in a United Appeal for the Dead), TV shows, and movies. There's some previews of Coming Attractions thrown in, touting 'Samuel L. Bronkowitz' productions of R-rated titillation pics (Catholic High School Girls in Trouble), disaster movies (That's Armaggedon!!), and Blaxploitation (Cleopatra Schwartz). The big set-piece is A Fistful of Yen, a pitch-perfect kung-fu parody with leads that can't pronounce their R's ('Total consentwation'), cheesy sound effects, an evil villain bent on world domination, and an insanely funny conclusion."

We re-watched the movie recently and came away with laugh cramps. A Fistful of Yen probably couldn't get made nowadays, nor would the short skit Danger Seekers (the N-word alone negates it), and there wouldn't be either as much nakedness or as many gay jokes, but the movie as a whole remains more funny than dated. Our favorite segments remain the trailer for Cleopatra Schwartz, with the delicious, doe-eyed Babe of Yesteryear Marilyn Joi, of the Jim Kelly-vehicle Black Samurai (1977 / trailer), Mansion of the Doomed (1976 / trailer) and a lot of other fun trash, like Ilsa, Harem Keeper of the Oil Sheiks (1976, see Part IX), as the titular Cleopatra.

Cleopatra Schwartz:

Catholic High School Girls in Trouble, famously enough, is the segment featuring Uschi Digard, whose famous breasts are felt up in a zoom to squeaky-balloon sound effects and subsequently squashed against a shower door during a shower sex scene. But hers are not the only merry melons paraded in the 2-minute faux-trailer: there's the memorable topless conversation between three healthy Catholic high-school girls (Nancy Mann, Lenka Novak [of Vampire Hookers (1978 / trailer) and Betsy Genson] who are later chained up and whipped by a dwarf...

The Wonderful World of Sex sketch is pretty funny, and a good argument against instructional records. Stuntman Manny Perry, in his full yummy muscular prime, shows up for the punch line as "Big Jim Slade".

But though we find The Kentucky Fried Movie funny, not everyone does. Flick Filosopher, for example, says, "If I had been introduced to the film at a more impressionable age, I might today have pleasant adolescent memories of it that would color my grownup response to it today, and perhaps I could be kinder to a movie considered a comedy classic by some. But I wasn't, I haven't, and I can't. […] The Kentucky Fried Movie believes itself to be wild, but it's depressingly quite restrained: it sets up a formula for itself — cheap setup, obvious punchline, then a treadmill of repeating the punchline instead of developing it even further — and never once deviates from it." (Sounds like the Trump presidency to us, actually.)

Female Fever

(1977, dir. Alain Patrick)

Though listed at the imdb and at the (possibly now-defunct) Uschi Digard website as 1977 release, more than one on-line lead indicates that the movie was actually shot in 1970, possibly 1972.

Occasional actor/filmmaker Alain Patrick disappeared by 1979, two years after his last directorial release (this one), which is credited to the pen of Mikel Angel (31 Oct 1926 – 21 April 2001), who wrote a number of movies for Matt Cimber. (See our typically meandering blog entry at our dead blog Mostly Crappy Books on Gregg Tyler's trashy "biography" The Joy of Hustling.)

The generally highly reliable Temple of Schlock, whence the advertisement below comes and which has the film on its "Endangered List", gives Fusion as an A.K.A. title to Female Fever, and indeed we tend to think that Female Fever and Fusion are indeed one and the same movie, though Fusion (1970) is generally credited as a directorial effort of Paul Hunt. Both movies, however, are always credited as having the same producer, "the elusive Ed De Priest" — and going by what De Priest says at the Rialto Report, they could indeed be one and the same movie: "Fusion was an R-rated movie. It was shot during the transition period to hardcore, and I said, 'Let me try to transition to an R-rated movie instead', so I produced this movie. We filmed it at my A-frame house in the Hollywood Hills and then around Hollywood. It was a murder thing. It was not a very good film but we did have some good camera work and it was photographed real nice. I don't remember if Alain Patrick was the director but Paul Hunt did some second unit photography and he'd built a little opening scene for that movie with Ron Garcia. I did a little intro, a little prologue, to it. It had Luanne Roberts and somebody, Michael Stern maybe. I forget the actors, but it wasn't a success so I went back to the sex films."

De Priest makes no mention of any novel by an author named Richard Evan, upon which the Temple of Schlock claims the film may be based, nor, for that matter, of Uschi.

One-Sheet Index has the full plot to Female Fever aka Fusion, which it also proclaims a 1970 release: "A bizarre tale of sex and psychodrama begins when Cathy (Damian Zisk), an inexperienced young artist is befriended by Ruth (LuAnn Roberts), a worldly and sophisticated woman. On the spur of the moment Ruth invites Cathy to live with her. At first, Ruth is flattered by Cathy's devotion and the undertones of a lesbian relationship bring them closer and closer. As Cathy develops a possessive fixation on the older girl, we begin to realize that she has a dark, psychotic side to her nature. At a house party given by Ruth, she encourages Cathy to mingle with her guests. Cathy is persuaded by Michael (James Lemp [2 Aug 1938 – 6 Nov 2012] of The Love Butcher [1975 / trailer] & The Garden of the Dead [1972 / full film]), a gentle, handsome man, to go with him to his home. There, in spite of herself, she succumbs to his masculine charm. It is her first love affair with a man and she is torn by her feelings toward Ruth and her newly found attraction to Michael. She confesses to Ruth these mixed emotions and of her affair with Michael. Ruth tries to explain to an innocent Cathy that it is possible to love more than one person at the same time. Later, in a chance meeting, the triangle takes form. Ruth and Michael are attracted to each other and begin an exciting courtship. They try to let Cathy down gently but she is hurt and confused. In their desire not to hurt her, they include Cathy in all their activities, but soon their longing to be only with each other leads Ruth and Michael to exclude Cathy more and more from their company. Eventually in a desperate move to break away, Ruth and Michael go to Acapulco. Brooding alone, Cathy is torn between the two people she loves. In a scene remarkable for its outstanding photography, she fantasizes the murder of Ruth and Michael, her tortured mind rationalizing her act because she had loved them both. She has crossed the thin line between love and hate and now they must pay for her rejection. This is one of the most eerie and bizarre murder scenes ever put on film. As Cathy's fantasy comes to an end, we find Ruth and Michael at the door. They are returned from their vacation and together they inform Cathy that they were married in Acapulco. Cathy feigns delight, but starts living out her nightmare in reality. As the picture ends, suspense grips us and we are left wondering whether or not Cathy's murderous fantasy will become real."

Uschi Digard is there for the ride, somewhere, along with Neola Graef. Indeed, Female Fever appears to be the last movie Neola Graef ever appeared in before she decided to give up films and work on her tan under coconut trees.

At the Ohio Midway Drive-In, as revealed above, Female Fever was screened with a movie we couldn't locate, Everyday (year and everything unknown by us) and the 1968 faux-Swedish exploiter Sappho Darling (1968, see Part I).

Trailer to

Sappho, Darling:

Needless to say, Alain Patrick's Female Fever should in no way be confused with the possibly as equally lost documentary entitled Female Fever aka Image of Love (poster below) by the respected (and dead) documentarian Louis ("Lou") Clyde Stouman (15 July 1917 – 13 Sept 1991), "an ambitious review of man's sacred and profane concepts of love as expressed and revealed through the ages in various works of art […]."

BTW: Female Fever aka Image of Love has Anthony Newley (24 Sept 1931 – 14 April 1999, of Can Hieronymus Merkin Ever Forget Mercy Humppe and Find True Happiness... [1969 / trailer]) speaking the commentary, "which is a jumble of erudition, passable wit and feeble jokes [with which] Mr. Stoumen presents us with the evidence of man's eternal quest for ideal beauty, ranging from a primitive carving of a fat and fertile female to modern girls in bikinis or less, from fragments of Greek statuary to the latest in foreign sports cars." We mention that as an excuse to embed the song below — enjoy!

Anthony Newley — Princess Trampolina

(from Heironymus Merkin):

Hot Skin in 3-D

(1977, dir. "Norm de Plume")

A.k.a. Disco Dolls in Hot Skin and Blonde Emanuelle. "Norm de Plume", aka "Giorgio Ferrari", is probably the nom de plume of Stephen Gibson — aka S.C. Gibson, Steve Gibson, Stan Gelson, Stephen Charles Gibson and Pierre La Farce. Indeed, we wouldn't be surprised if he were also Ann Onymous & Mark Thunderbuns, the two supposed authors of the screenplay to Disco Dolls in Hot Skin, as he seems to have written the screenplay to many of his known production/directorial credits, which are all 3-D movies: The Playmates (1973 / full film), Black Lolita a.k.a Wildcat Women (1975 / intro), Hard Candy (1976 / trailer), this flick here and, most recently, the obscure splatter comedy Hackin' Jack vs. the Chainsaw Chick (2014 / trailer directly below).

Trailer to

Hackin' Jack vs. the Chainsaw Chick:

Disco is the original hardcore cut, Blonde the "softcore" cut; in Disco, the name of the main character, played by Serena, changes from Jennifer to Emanuelle. (Trivia: Serena's feature-film debut may have been an un-credited part in Black Lolita as an agent — a fact mentioned as an excuse to embed the poster, which we have always liked for some odd reason.)

In any event, both versions of the movie enjoyed some cult popularity towards the end of the last century as a "So Bad It's Good" product. (Over at efilmcritic, for example, it gets a non-Siskel & Ebert ranking of "Two dicks down".)

Though John Holmes is listed everywhere and by almost everyone as a star of the film, he is but an extra that appears in the background during a party scene; he doesn't even have a real scene. Uschi does, however, though not hardcore: she plays Anna, who gets it on with Harry Balls (William Margold), whose name is the joke that famously gets flogged like a dead horse over the course of the movie. (Her scene, however, is not only not hardcore, it isn't even in the hardcore version of the movie.)

Over at All Movie, Mark Deming offers the following plot description: "A kiss is just a kiss, but it often leads to other things in this farcical adult comedy which bears a certain narrative resemblance to Casablanca (1942 / trailer). Chick (Mike Ranger) is the owner of a combination nightclub and brothel. One night he is surprised to see Emmanuelle (Serena) walk through the door with her lover, Harry Balls (William Margold [2 Oct 1943 – 17 Jan 2017]). Chick used to be involved with Emmanuelle, but her sexual appetite so sapped his strength that he's been unable to perform with another woman since, including his new girlfriend (Leslie Bovee), so he's a bit taken aback by her sudden appearance. It turns out that Emmanuelle and Harry are on the run from a police detective (Con Covert [1935 – 1990]) looking to bust Harry for embezzlement; Emmanuelle and Harry give Chick an incriminating note for safekeeping, and when it goes missing during an erotic free-for-all, there's a rush among several parties to find it. A psychiatrist (Bert Davis) appears periodically to counsel the various characters along the way. [...]"

Uschi's Anna character is the main waitress at Chick's club. For a change, Con Covert doesn't do drag in the movie. Mike Ranger's legendary big & fat & left-curving weapon of wonder is indeed one of mass destruction, and he looks great from the neck down, but for all his popularity during the Golden Age, he is a man whom we think we would find hotter if he had a bag over his face. (That said, in comparison to John Holmes, who was/is ugly personified, he is good looks personified.)

Ranger whipped out his rent-payer for the last time in the mid-1980s, probably for Taboo III (1984 / scene), the last non-loop porno movie with any semblance of a plot in which he is found; where he is now or what he is doing, no one knows.

Over at Whateverishly: The Greatest Blog Ever Hula'd, Coco Buchanan did not find the movie all that culty fun, saying that the flick "contributed to me feeling like I just wanted to go home and chop my genitals off". Aside from the fact that there was one too many blowjobs for her taste and an audience of obnoxiously drunk dudes, there was the typical (for the time) "no means yes" forced sex scene and "a scene towards the end that involved one of the main characters (Harry Balls, played by William Margold) drowning a dom (Pat Manning) as he's fucking her. I think that might have been where it took its most repulsive turn, for me. There was also this running gag with her dead body that made light of the fact that this woman had been killed. I mean, I know it's a porn, so it's supposed to be raunchy, crass, etc., but I honestly cannot not think of anything less erotic. [...]"

For more Uschi go to Part XI…

Wednesday, May 13, 2020

Babes of Yesteryear – Uschi Digard, Part X: 1977

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