12 January 1928 — 26 March 2014
"When I was a kid, my Daddy told me, 'There's a buyer for everything.' And I lived to find out that he was right."
Harry H. Novak
Harry H. Novak, alongside David F Friedman (24 December 1923 — 14 February 2011) one of the great (s)exploitation kings of the last half of the 20th century, died 26 March 2014 at the age of 86.
A detailed career review of all the projects Harry H. Novak foisted upon the American public would be Sisyphean task at best and hardly possible, as no full and unequivocal list exists. What follows is a review of the films that we found that, for the most part, probably had Novak's involved somewhere along the way — and some that may not have. It is definitely not a complete list, and definitely not infallible, it is merely culled from sources reliable and unreliable that we found online. We also in no way suggest that the given release dates are the correct ones, they are merely the first ones we found.
If you know any we missed, feel free to send the title...
Go here for Part II: 1956-64
Go here for Part III: 1965-66
Go here for Part IV: 1967
Go here for Part V: 1968
Go here for Part VI: 1969
Go here for Part VII: 1970
Go here for Part VIII: 1971
The Mad Butcher
(1972, dir. Guido Zurli [as John Zurli])
Trailer:
Aka Lo strangolatore di Vienna, Meat Is Meat, The Mad Butcher of Vienna, The Vienna Strangler, L'étrangleur de Vienne, The Strangler of Vienna and Der Würger kommt auf leisen Socken — the last if which would roughly translate into "The killer comes quietly in socks".
Somewhere along the way Novak, as Valiant International Pictures, picked up the distribution rights to this sleazy but fun piece of Eurotrash starring the great Victor Buono (3 February 1938 — 1 January 1982, of Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? [1962 / trailer], The Evil [1978 / trailer], Arnold [1973 / trailer], The Strangler [1964 / trailer], Moonchild [1974 / full movie] and the Colonialist-minded Return to the Planet of the Apes [1970 / trailer]). The Mad Butcher was directed by the tendentially less interesting Italian director Guido Zurli (9 January 1929 — 23 October 2009), a man best remembered for this movie here, the fun Gordon Scott sandal film Goliath and the Vampires (1961), and the porno flick Gola profonda nera (1977 / opening credits), starring everyone's favorite transgendered Eurotrash film star Ajita Wilson (born George Wilson in Brooklyn in 1950, died in Italy on 26 May 1987 from injuries sustained in a car accident).
Trailer to
Guido Zurli's Goliath and the Vampires:
According to what Novak told Mondo Digital, he actually sank money into The Mad Butcher: "I put up some of the money to finish that one. It was originally called The Strangler of Vienna or The Butcher of Vienna. [...] I called it The Mad Butcher because the true story of the Butcher of Vienna involved a guy who killed people and ground them up. There was even a book that used the same name. [...] I changed the name to The Mad Butcher to sell it to the newspapers, because Vienna wouldn't mean much to them. All of my pictures played the drive-ins, including that one, but the biggest by far were the hillbilly ones." [As perhaps to be expected, Novak was shaky about the facts of the true story: Adolph Louis Luetgert (27 December 1845 — 7 July 1899) was born in Germany, not Austria, and his crime was committed in Chicago.]
In general, however, the credited producer of The Mad Butcher is Dick Randall, who is also credited in the movie as a co-scriptwriter. Dick Randall (born Irving Reuben, 3 March 1926 — 14 May 1996) is yet another overlooked and mostly forgotten exploitation producer with numerous noteworthy titles to his name, including Pieces (1982 / trailer), Lady Frankenstein (1971), Slaughter High (1986 / trailer), Tombs of the Blind Dead (1972 / trailer), The Werewolf Versus the Vampire Woman (1971 / trailer), The French Sex Murders (1972 / French trailer), Don't Open Till Christmas (1984 / German trailer), Living Doll (1990 / see below), The Wild, Wild World of Jayne Mansfield (1968 / full movie), The Girl in Room 2A (1974 / trailer), Death Dimension (1978 with Jim Kelly), For Your Height Only (1981 / trailer) and more, more, more. He and his wife, the singer singer Corliss Randall, sometimes appeared in his pictures or worked behind the scenes.
Trailer to
Living Doll (1990):
But to get back to The Mad Butcher, Critical Condition saw the movie: "Otto (Victor Buono), 'Vienna's greatest butcher', is released from the lunatic asylum after spending three years there for hitting a woman over the head with two pounds of raw liver. Declared cured, Otto returns to the butcher shop and his shrewish wife (Franca Polcelli), only to be horrified about how high the price of sausages have become. He immediately slashes the price and must find a way to come up with a cheaper cut of meat. After killing his nagging wife (what a bitch!) and having a difficult time disposing of her body, Otto finally solves his meat problem. Needless to say, his new sausages are a hit. So much in fact, that Otto must find new victims to keep up with the demand. Mike (Brad Harris of The Freakmaker [1974]), a Chicago reporter on assignment in Vienna, is working on a story about the disappearance of several women, all of who are Otto's new sausage meat. Mike falls in love with a woman (Karen Field of The Hunchback of Soho [1964 / see below] and Web of the Spider [1971 / credit sequence]) who happens to live next door to Otto's butcher shop. Mike grows suspicious of Otto and has the police search the butcher shop. They find nothing thanks to Otto's vat of sulphuric acid. Otto kidnaps Mike's girl-friend in retaliation. When her ring is found in one of the sausages served at the police commissary, Mike rushes over to the butcher shop and saves his love in the nick of time, knocking Otto into his sausage-grinding machine. As we witness the grinder spewing out Otto sausages, a superimposed message wishes us 'Buono Appetito'! This Italian horror/comedy is [...] short on gore (at least in this edited, letterboxed and slightly dupey 80 minute version) but high on the laugh scale. Some of the jokes are subtle, so you must watch and listen very carefully. (Don't watch the actors' lips, because it is badly dubbed.) The late, great character actor Victor Buono greatly enhances the proceedings here, adding the right amount of menace and parody to his role."
Trailer to
The Hunchback of Soho (1964):
Eighteen Carat Virgin
(1972, dir. Emilio Portici)
As "P. Arthur Murphy" Emilio Portici did more than one cheap and sleazy hardcore one-day (maybe two-day) wonders, often featuring Carol Connors — best remembered as the Nurse in Deep Throat (1972, starring Harry Reems) and as the mother of Thora Birch — and Marc Brock, the latter of whom is also found in this blatant but nevertheless softcore flick that we include here primarily because a few online sources give (unsubstantiated) credit to the involvement of Novak / Boxoffice.
Emilio Portici's Eighteen Carat Virgin is not to be confused with the 1968 Danish sex film (poster below) featuring Anne Grete Nissen as "a young high-school woman whose problem with frigidity is helped by her understanding physician" aka Without A Stitch Of Clothing and The Eighteen Carat Virgin.Portici's Eighteen Carat Virgin was written by the forgotten but noteworthy Joseph P. Mawra (aka José M. González-Prieto), who wrote and directed a number noteworthy exploiters, including Miss Leslie's Dolls (1973), Shanty Tramp (1967 / full movie), Murder in Mississippi (1965), Olga's Girls (1964 / trailer), White Slaves of Chinatown (1964 / music) and Olga's House of Shame (1964 / trailer).
Trailer to
Joseph P. Mawra's Chained Girls (1965):
One Sheet Wonder — we mean, One Sheet Index — has the one-sheet description of Eighteen Carat Virgin: "Life on the farm was never easy for Annie (Nicole Vadim), the young, innocent and lovely virgin. On top of the regular chores she had to submit to her step-father's sexual demands and ultimately be brutally raped by him. Desperate and dejected she took to the road, ending up penniless in Miami Beach. In the big city, luck finally caught up with Annie. By befriending two high-class call girls and their pimp, she became the mistress of a wealthy South American ex-dictator who showered her with all the world's goodies including a yacht and a chauffeured Rolls Royce. To add to her financial success Annie, now Nanette, in a matter of months reorganized the girls' operations with great business acumen. All three prospered substantially as each one's bank account grew fatter and fatter. Her business instinct did wonders and everyone seemed happy except when she neglected to pay her share to Uncle Sam. In the surprising end of this exciting story we see the ultimate proof that money is still everything. Annie is now back on the farm, working on the prison farm."
The only person who seems to have seen this "quality soft-core porn about prostitution" is lor (of New York, New York), who writes on imdb that he once caught the movie at a Cleveland drive-in in the 70s: "Emilio Portici [...] tried a whole lot harder, with good results. Instrumental to the film's success is star Nicole Vadim [...], a talented lookalike for Ally Sheedy. She plays Annie, a girl from Kentucky who's raped by her step-dad after he catches her humping with a neighbor boy. Despite this set-up, she's still a virgin (in the twisted logic of porn). [...] Story is told largely in flashback from the vantage point of her success a year later, from the back seat of her Rolls Royce. [...] Both the direction and Vadim's acting develop her transition from naive country girl to cynical dealmaker. [...] Film has many distinctive elements that set it apart from the run-of-the mill soft porn of its era. There's an original guitar-based music score that spurs on the action, and a guitar-playing balladeer who appears frequently on screen to sing new verses of the title song, ending appropriately with 'She's back on the farm, the prison farm'. Frequent full-frontal nudity by the cast, including tight close-ups of Vadim's vagina, give the fans what they paid for, though Portici clearly keeps it soft-core. [...] For most of its running time Virgin closely resembles a real movie. You can actually forget that it's just porn, something that's virtually impossible to do with most X films of its era."
Opening Credits to
Joseph P. Mawra's Shanty Tramp (1967):
While the Cat's Away
(1972, dir. Chuck Vincent)
Another film about which we have our doubts to what extent Novak was involved, but both My Duck Is Dead and a list at AV Maniacs claim he was involved, and who are we to disagree?
While the Cat's Away is an early softcore movie from Chuck Vincent, one of the pioneers of hardcore films. (Vincent directed his first show-it-all fuck flick, Lecher, starring future District Attorney for Cortland County, "Guy Thomas" [real name: Mark Suben], a year later as "Marc Ubell"). Vincent (6 September 1940 — 23 September 1991) made a number of Golden Age X-rated "classics", including Roommates (1981 / cut trailer) and Jack n' Jill (1979), was the executive producer of one of Harry Reems' last non-porn appearances, RSVP (1984 / trailer), and dabbled with mainstream with such films as Warrior Queen (1987) and Deranged (1987) and a gaggle of lame T&A jiggle comedies like Hollywood Hot Tubs (1984) and Wimps (1986 / full movie).
Japanese Trailer to
Vincent's Bad Blood (1989):
While the Cat's Away, like most of the movies of the unjustly overlooked filmmaker, has not been the focus of much attention. The only synopsis we could find online is at My Duck Is Dead, which surely swiped it from elsewhere but we know not where: "This Harry Novak release from noted sexploitation director Chuck Vincent is an inventive and amusing send-up of early seventies' sex mores, perfectly capturing the spirit of many men's publications of the day. Sales are down at Expose magazine ('All the Filth that's Fit to Print!') so the worried editor sends Lurch (J.M. Everett), a bumbling Clouseau-type undercover reporter, to document the sex life of the typical American housewife, something which ordinary readers will identify with. Chosen at random from the telephone book is Mrs. Jones (pretty Kathryn Ford) but, as Lurch soon discovers, she is anything but a typical American housewife... After failing to interest her husband in a little wake-up b.j., Mrs. Jones offers him a nude breakfast by cracking eggs over her pert breasts and shaking the orange juice between her supple thighs. From this moment on, While the Cat's Away becomes little more than a series of enjoyable vignettes, as we watch Mr. and Mrs. Jones go about their daily routines [...]. Mrs. Jones receives more than simple oral treatment from her local dentist ('You have a nasty little hole that I need to fill!'), while Mr. Jones has sex with some anonymous pick-up in the stairwell of his office building. The next stop for our little lady is the beauty parlor where she switches from AC to DC with the manicurist (Sonny Landham's ex-wife Marlene Willoughby of Voices of Desire [1972] and Dracula Exotica [1980 / a death]) while the old lady (Dulce Mann of The Defiance of Good [1975 / trailer]) next to her prattles on incessantly about the dreadful state of the world. While Mr. Jones seems to do nothing all day but have sex at the office, Mrs. Jones arrives home to find the mailman waiting at the front door and the milkman at the rear. A hot menage a trois results, with Mrs. Jones finding all sorts of creative ways to combine sex and housework. As the day progresses, she just gets busier and busier. [...]"
Excerpt from
Chuck Vincent's Voices of Desire (1972):
Wild Honey
(1972, writ & dir. Don Edmonds)
Probably not based on the Midwood erotic novel of the same name (see below) written by "Don Karl", whose fabulous cover illustration is by the sadly underappreciated artist Paul Rader.
Wild Honey is the directorial début of Don Edmonds (1 September 1937 — 30 May 2009), former and occasional actor (for example: Beach Ball [1965 / trailer] and Wild Wild Winter [1966]) who, after this film, still did an occasional acting job (Home Sweet Home [1981 / trailer], for example) but concentrated mostly on writing, producing and directing — including some true sleaze classics: Ilsa: She Wolf of the SS (1975 / trailer) & Ilsa, Harem Keeper of the Oil Sheiks (1976 / trailer). Other films we find of note that he touched: Skeeter (1993 / trailer, with Charles Napier), True Romance (1993 / trailer), Beyond Evil (1980 / trailer), Saddle Tramp Women (1972), Tender Loving Care (1973) and the Charles Napier vehicle, The Night Stalker (1987).
Jay & the Americans singing
Two of a Kind from Wild, Wild, Winter:
Over at Shocking Images, they have a read-worthy interview of him in which he talks about Wild Honey: "I wrote a picture called Wild Honey, and that was the first film I ever directed. Something Weird has a tape of it. It's too bad, because I've seen their tape, and it's chopped up something terrible. The quality is fourth or fifth generation. I wish I could find the negative. Harry Novak has it, but he won't give it to me. He distributed the picture, and he won't even get on the phone with me. [...] It's badly chopped. [...] It was a normal length, ninety-minute movie. It did really well, actually, when we put it out. [...] Not hardcore, just the beginnings of naked stuff. In those days, just putting tits on the screen was a big deal. I wanted to be a little more flamboyant than that, but if you've ever seen Wild Honey, it's not a hardcore picture. It's a tits and ass film." (Including those of cult faves Bambi Allen and Uschi Digert.)
Online, we found a blurb from Mike Accomando's classic fanzine, Dreadful Pleasures: "Released by Harry Novak, Wild Honey is the tender tale of Gypsy (played by healthy-looking Donna Young of Edward D. Wood Jr.'s Take It Out in Trade [1970], Stephen C. Apostolof's Five Loose Women [1974] and Al Adamson's The Naughty Stewardesses [1975]). After almost being raped by Daddy, she runs away from the farm and winds up in La La Land. Soon she is partying with a squadron of hippies led by a space cadet named Astral (Allan Warnick, seen somewhere in Mother, Jugs & Speed [1976 / trailer]) and The Two Jakes [1990 / trailer]). 'What's your sign?' he actually asks. They zone out on LSD. The meat of this softcore movie concerns Gypsy's rise to stardom. She poses for stag photos and is genuinely treated like a doormat by everyone. Then she lucks out and meets a lesbian Madam who sets her up as a high-priced call girl. Money. Apartment. New car. Gypsy's hit the big time. But it's not enough. She is insatiable now..."
Trailer to
The Naughty Stewardesses (1975):
Exploitation Retrospect is of the opinion that Wild Honey is a "Cinderella story gone horribly, horribly wrong": "A moral fable, disguised as a sexploitation roughie fashioned as a loose cautionary tale about why you shouldn't party with guys wearing black robes in the Hollywood hills, there is still enough here to make you ponder the true nature of morality, the decay of social mores; modern values and even to just blink and wonder 'what the hell' to yourself. [...] Wild Honey was trite, stupid and unrealistic but it did have varied thematic music for every setting and the flesh was excessive. I'll admit to one thing, this film was so damned random, switching between moral message and quasi-explicit action so frequently that I found myself not predicting what was going to happen next, something that hardly ever happens to me when I watch a film. Wild Honey was an aptly-named little flick that was sweet and sticky at first, but just when you start to enjoy its fleshy nectar it stings you at the end... does this look swollen to you?"
Tobacco Roody
(1972, writ & dir Bethel Buckalew)
Yes, written and directed by the real Bethel Buckalew. Not to be confused with Tobacco Road (1941), poster below.
Rod's Pleasure Palace says: "This film isn't exactly XXX, but definitely delves into the realm of softcore, often referred to during this time period as 'sexploitation.' The feature film, Tobacco Roody, is the story of an aunt and uncle raising their two daughters and an orphaned niece on a back-roads farm (supposedly in the South but really in California). In overly predictable fashion, the uncle lusts for his niece, and the two sisters enjoy exploring each other down for the stream. Even the wife manages to keep herself busy with the sheriff and the tax collector. Keep in mind the camera shots never show any actual penetration, but there's still plenty of grinding to go around. Seeing what actresses Buckalew and Novak got to fill the parts makes me wonder how it is that Rocco was able to keep his pink piggy from view and flaccid for that matter. Truly the mark of a professional!"
Trailer to
Tobacco Roody:
TCM adds the names of the characters: "Lulu (Wendy Winders) and Carolina (Gigi Perez), daughters of Mose Mason (Johnny Rocco), a Neeley's Bend, Tennessee, moonshiner, are jealous of their father's voluptuous niece, Tootie (Dixie Donovan). At the swimming creek, Lulu passes on to Carolina the sex education she received from Harry (Bethel Buckalew himself), a city slicker. When Tootie arrives, the sisters cover her with mud and send her home to be comforted by her uncle. The sheriff (Bruce Kimball, of Love Camp 7 [1967 / trailer] and Brain of Blood [1971 / see below]) halts Mose's moonshining activities, but Liz (Debbie Osborne), Mose's wife, tired of being ignored, shifts the intruder's attention to herself. The sisters continue their sex education game at home. Three farmers visit the farm and find a jug of Mose's homemade liquor. Judd Parker (Jack Richesin), the lascivious landlord, threatens to foreclose the mortgage until Liz sexually accommodates him. Tootie and her cousins fall asleep and are joined by the drunken farmers, and soon they are all making love. Danielle ('Maxine DeVille France' of Streets of Paris [1967]), a French damsel who speaks no English, passes by the farm and seeks directions of Mose, who seduces her in the barn. Liz returns just after Danielle's departure and finally agrees to try some mountain dew. Having found something to share at last, the happy couple enters the house to make love."
Trailer to
Brain of Blood (1971):
DVD Drive-In says: "The requisite cast of Novak studs and sluts is here [...]. And this is the only hillbilly sex flick Novak produced which doesn't feature scene-stealer John Tull as 'Junior'. This may be part of the reason why the film isn't that great. Sure, I know these are sex films, but the other entries in Novak's 'series' had humorous dialogue, intelligent camerawork, and much more memorable cast members (Rene Bond, Peggy Church, Sharon Kelly). Tobacco Roody has some choice dialogue, and the hose scene is sizzling, but for the most part it's passable filler. Let's move on."
In Germany, it hit the theatre's a Lust auf Heisse Lippen, which could sort of translate into Hot for Hot Lips.
Street of a Thousand Pleasures
(1972, dir. William Rotsler [as Clay McCord])
Aka Arab Slave Market and Dreams. Novak distributes another Rotsler film, this one co-written by "Sam Dakota", who seems never to have done anything else. This movie has the distinction of being mentioned in AMC Filmsite's History of Sex in Cinema: The Greatest and Most Influential Sexual Films and Scenes, where they write: "This was a notorious X-rated sexploitation (called a 'nudie cutie') film from the early 70s [...]. The film's subtitle was: 'There's something in it for everyone.' It also promised: 'A Journey through the Whispered World of Women.'
In the virtually plotless movie, American businessman/oil field geologist John Dalton (John Tull), during a trip to the Middle East away from his nagging wife in Los Angeles, rescued Arab sheik Abdul Ben Hassein from an assassination knife attack by shooting the assailant. He was rewarded with a trip to the spectacular 'street of a thousand pleasures,' where he was introduced to the slave market-harem filled with dozens of naked women functioning as sex servants. [Note: Some of the females included Uschi Digart, as 'Busty Slave Girl'; pin-up girl Michelle Angelo, as 'Busty Girl with Apple'; Joyce Mandel, as 'Busty Girl with Goblet', and many other un-credited beauties.] He viewed scores of feminine treats with 'Girl-A-Vision' (a hand-held camera presented his point of view from a hands-on perspective, often with enlarged close-ups of body parts). Bodies could be caressed or kissed, and eventually, John had brief sex with a few of the females, including a black belly dancer (Malta). The film ended with another strike by the Arab assassin, who killed the sheik (having sex) by stabbing him to death, while nearby, John was also having sex. After wrestling with the assassin, John left the Middle East and returned home with a willing American slave."
Flick Attack, which finds "the breast-to-penis ratio is something like, what, 4,200 to 3" says: "I have never seen more female nudity in a motion picture than the flesh on parade in Street of a Thousand Pleasures. Hell, I have never seen more female nudity anywhere — motion picture or otherwise. For that alone, you really don’t need to read further; just watch it."
The Loves of Cynthia
(1972, dir. Arnold Baxter)
Supposedly aka Cynthia's Sister, distributed by Novak. Written by Michael Hardy who, like director Baxter, seems never to have done anything again — at least, not under the same name: seeing that the film is Scandinavian, it seems likely that some of the Anglo-Saxonized names of those involved in Overklassens hemmelige sexglæder (the Danish title) are fake.
One name that isn't is Flanagan, aka Maureen Flanagan, the "early tabloid model" (above) who plays the title character. The photo below is taken from her website here; to quote her own CV, where she evidences a slight inability of spelling, prior to The Loves of Cynthia she "Played Staring Role As Raquel Welch Slave" in The Magic Christian (1969 / trailer), and also appeared in Groupie Girl (1970 / trailer), The Love Pill (1971) The Love Box (1972) Dracula AD 1972 (1972 / trailer below) and Stanley A. Long's Sex through the Ages (1974). She also wrote the best-selling non-fiction book, Intimate Secrets of an Escort Girl.
Trailer to
Dracula AD 1972 (1972):
Not many people seem to have seen the film; our semi-superficial search of the web came up with two websites, both of which had the same text, which was as follows: "Presented by that King of Sleaze Harry Novak comes this film about a woman (Flanagan) who leaves her film career in Rome (no longer wanted) and comes to stay with her sister who married a millionaire. While there she devises a plan for her brother-in-law's brother and servant to have sex with her sister after being drugged with an aphrodisiac in the hopes that her brother-in-law will divorce her sister and marry her."
Sweet Georgia
(1972, dir. Edward Boles)
Here at A Wasted Life, we really are amazed by the number of people, like Edward Boles here, who seems to have directed a single film for Harry Novak and then were never heard of again. A launching pad for future careers ala Roger Corman, Harry Novak was not — or, perhaps, pseudonyms simply ruled the day.
Naked Wimin & More in
Sweet Georgia:
Harry Novak produced and distributed this hixploitation flick described by the infamous Johnny Legend (of Bug Buster [1998]) as "corn porn" and about which Digitally Obsessed says: "This may have been Boles' only film (exploitation or otherwise), but it is truly a morals-busting doozy. Sex-crazed nymphomaniac and busty blonde Georgia (Marsha Jordan) may be married to the abusive, greasy, and violent Big T (Gene Drew), but naturally that doesn't stop her from bedding down with just about every other character in the film, including her free-spirited stepdaughter Virginia (Barbara Mills) and hunky farmhand Cal (Chuck Lawson, who resembles an odd cross between Neil Young and Jay Leno). The sex is frequent, long-lasting and almost unduly excessive, as if Boles and Novak didn't really have much else for the characters to do other than disrobe and go at it. The coupling between Georgia and Virginia, which occurs during a late night campfire, is about as close as Boles gets to high art here, and most of the sex is shot with strange closeups of bumping flesh. A subplot about a goldmine goes nowhere, but things pick up after a main character gets stomped by a horse and another gets a pitchfork rammed through his chest. The twangy guitar music is a bit grating, but Jordan and Mills are attractive women, and Novak has Boles fully utilize their natural talents."
The "twangy guitar music" is from Harold Hensley (3 July 1922 — 15 September 1988) and Hal Southern (1919 — 15 July 1998), two real down home boys who supplied the music a number of Novak hixploiters.
Not from the film —
Hal Southern sings I'm Gonna' Drink You out of My Mind:
DVD Drive-In tells us about eh babes of the movie: "Sweet Georgia was conceived as a star vehicle for Marsha Jordan, the middle-aged blonde bombshell who had been quite a box office draw in the mid-to-late 60s. [...] But like fellow big-breast superstar Uschi Digart, she held her own until the mid-70s when Marsha finally married well and fled to Las Vegas, where she has lived for the past 30 years. This is definitely not one of her better films for one major reason: the real treasure of the film is long-haired brunette Barbara Caron (Mills), a familiar face in 70s sexploitation and one of few starlets of the period who never graduated from softcore to hardcore. A sure sign of class! Barbara, a college student with an art major, appeared in over a dozen skinflicks between classes and in an interesting revelation, is still married to the same man who supported her during her acting career! She is an independent painter in the Venice [CA] art scene today and still looks gorgeous."
Not from the film —
Harold Hensley & the Virginia Mountaineers H and J Breakdown (1966):
DVD Verdict hates the film, saying "Sweet Georgia takes the standard potboiler story of a nymphomaniac wife burdened by a big fat sow of a husband and adds a lot of sweltering heat and deserted Nevada locales just to prove once and for all that, if you've seen one Harry Novak hillbilly sex farce, you've seen them all. Marsha Jordan, who's obviously someone's idea of a fetching female fornicator, flaunts her floppy flesh folds and crooks her incredibly pinched nose all throughout her turn in the title role. Looking at the DVD cover, you'd think Georgia was some hotsy totsy blonde with a randy rack and a come-hither stare that melts men's members. But as personified by the decidedly older Jordan, our Sweet star looks like the kind of over-the-hill barmaid you see begging for tips from long haul truckers. And since her choices of bed pals are a rather ripe lot (there's Cal, a salt and pepper haired skunk hunk; the retarded pasty-white stable man; and her really rotund hubby), she's always touching herself in a never-ending series of sex-starved tics."
Trailer:
The Pigkeeper's Daughter
(1972, Bethel Buckalew)
Another Novak-produced hixploiter directed by the yes-he-really-did-exist director Bethel Buckalew. At the moment, the full film can be found at this NSFW fuck film site.
Trailer to
The Pig Keeper's Daughter:
Movies about Girls says: "The Pig Keeper's Daughter takes a sliver-thin premise — the salesman and the farmer's daughter joke — and stretches it out to feature length with a seemingly endless series of dusty, farm-bound sex romps. Cheap, brainless, gleefully grimy, and littered with buoyant double-Ds, The Pig Keeper's Daughter was clearly influenced by Russ Meyer. In fact, if ol' Russ was a moonshine guzzling yokel with holes in his shoes and a two-dollar budget, this is exactly the movie he'd make. [...] If you are looking for anything resembling a sensible piece of filmmaking, than you should probably stay away from The Pig Keeper's Daughter. But if you really like looking at busty 70s chicks with full bush and no shame, then run-don't-walk to your nearest discount website/physical media dealer and snap this minor masterpiece of southern fried filth up. Senseless and sleazy, it strips softcore of all its erotic pretensions, and just lets it all hang out. Street-level sleaze hounds will love it."
Strange Things Are Happening doesn't like the movie: "The (thin) story of simple farm folk, it revolves mainly around a horny local yokel named Jasper (John Keith) who wants to get it on with young virgin Patty (Peggy Church, of Tom DeSimone's Prison Girls [1972]) but has to make do with the accommodating pig keeper's daughter of the title (Terry Gibson), a horny salesman (Peter James) and the efforts of the pig farmer (Bruce Kimball of Pink Angels [1972 / see below] and Drive In Massacre [1977 / trailer], the last as 'John Law') and his wife (a trimmed Gina Paluzzi) to find a man for their daughter. None of this is particularly developed, as the film lurches from clumsy sex scene to clumsy sex scene. [...] But on the whole, very little happens apart from generally unattractive people undressing and fumbling around unconvincingly. [...] The sex scenes drag on as long as those in any hardcore film, but of course they don't actually show anything and so feel a lot longer [...]."
Trailer to
Pink Angels (1972):
John Keith, who plays Jasper (and as an "actor" is aka Pat O'Connor, Trickey Nicky and John Keats) went on to publically exchange body fluids for real (as "Trickey Nicky") in one of the more entertaining Exorcist (1973) rip-offs, Dominic Bolla's only known movie, the X-rated Angel Above the Devil Below (1975 / audio to trailer). The un-credited busty "15-year-old hitch-hiker" is played by Margot Kennedy, (aka Tammy Smith, Tina Smith, Joi Fuller and Ruth Armstrong), who, like John Keith, disappeared after a short and un-impressive career in porn.
I Dismember Mama
(1972, dir. Paul Leder)
Distributed by Valiant International Pictures, and thus by Harry Novak — it was released as part of a famous double feature with The Blood Spattered Bride (1972 / poster below), featuring Alexandra Bastedo... actually, the question is, what is more famous, the double feature or it's entertaining trailer.
Trailer to the double feature:
Aka, supposedly, as Poor Albert and Little Annie and Crazed, but I Dismember Mama is the title everyone remembers. On its original release, audience members were given free "Upchuck Cups". Director Paul Leder (25 March 1926 — 9 April 1996), an under-appreciated auteur director and producer of low budget what-the-fucks like this flick here, The Wacky Adventures of Dr. Boris and Nurse Shirley (1995 / scenes cut together), Ape (1976 / see below), My Friends Need Killing (1976 / full movie) and Vultures (1987). Script was by William W. Norton (24 September 1925 — 1 October 2010), who also wrote Big Bad Mama (1974 / trailer), The Hunting Party (1971 / trailer) and William Girdler's classic Day of the Animals (1977 / trailer).
Few people seem to like I Dismember Mama, which DVD Drive-in calls "a pretty boring psycho flick that should stay forgotten." The only positive words we could find about the movie come from Groovy Doom, which says "I Dismember Mama is a low budget curiosity that is full of interesting photography, excellent performances by actors, and a memorably bizarre story. Although its cheapness shows through in almost every scene, it shows just as much art and inspiration as it does technical ineptitude and fragmented editing. If it hadn't featured such convincing performances by the leads, it never would have worked."
All Movie has the plot: "Originally released as Albert and Annie, this low-budget, poorly lighted, non-action, slasher film features Albert (Zooey Hall of the mostly forgotten scandal film Fortune in Men's Eyes [1971] and 99 and 44/100% Dead [1974 / trailer]) as a deranged youth locked up in a mental institution by his super-rich mother until one day he is stopped from watching soft-porn movies in his room, and, upset at this deprivation, he escapes and starts killing women. Albert first returns to his family mansion where he torments and kills the buxom housekeeper. When her nine-year-old daughter Annie (future "Fake Jan Brady" Geri Reischi, also of The Brotherhood of Satan [1971] and The Meat Puppet [2012 / trailer]) comes in from school, Albert sees her as a perfect, innocent female and is compelled to protect her at all costs — even if it means killing off her impure, older sisters. If his sexual urges take over at night, Albert goes out and kills other 'immoral' women — until the police, through a maddeningly unrealistic bureaucratic maze, track him to a warehouse of mannequins — and the chase is on, at least for awhile."
A Trailer to
The Brotherhood of Satan (1971):
At Fantastic Movie Musings and Ramblings, Dave Sindelar says that "this movie features one of the most ill-advised sequences in cinema history; after having established the killer as an arrogant, hateful psychotic who terrorizes, humiliates and finally murders his mother's servant, the movie then has the psycho fall in love with the servant's nine-year old daughter, a circumstance which eventually leads to one of those romantic montages of the psycho and the little girl having fun around the town while a song plays on the soundtrack. This looks for all the world like an honest-to-God attempt to garner sympathy and affection for the psycho; I found this sequence utterly reprehensible, and if there's any part of the movie where I would have been tempted to use the 'Up Chuck Cups' that were handed out to ticket-buyers, this is it. [...] The musical score (which is often totally inappropriate) does its damnedest to cover up the fact that the direction is dull and lifeless. Even gorehounds will be disappointed at the small amount of blood in this one. In the end, it's not horrifying or scary; just unpleasant and unaffecting."
In 1994, Leder made the equally inept but thrice as forgotten "thriller" Killing Obsession which, eventually, was sold as I Dismember Mama's "sequel" Killing Annie (1994).
Herschel Burke Gilbert's theme to
I Dismember Mama:
Toys Are Not for Children
(1972, writ. & dir. Stanley H. Brassloff)
One of the more intriguing titles that Novak distributed and co-produced (un-credited), Toys Are Not for Children (aka Virgin Dolls) was directed by Stanley H. Brassloff (23 July 1930 — 17 April 2003), the not-very-productive semi-sleazemonger who also wrote and directed Two Girls for a Madman (1968 / see below) and produced Charles Romine's Any Body... Any Way aka Behind Locked Doors (1968), the latter of which we looked at in Part V of this career review.
Trailer to
Two Girls for a Madman (1968):
A super-detailed plot description can be found here at TCM, but we'll do with the Cliff Notes version found at TV Guide: "A movie that tries to be deep-thinking but just ends up too depressing, this supposed study in psychology watches young Jamie Godard (Marcia Forbes) grow up to be a hooker and attempts to explain why. She has been controlled by her domineering mother (Fran Warren) since her whoremonger father (Peter Lightstone) deserted them when she was a child. The mother, who hates men, keeps telling the little girl her daddy liked the company of streetwalkers. The film gets weird for the sicko set when she turns to prostitution and has her clients call her 'baby' as she calls them 'daddy' to fulfill the roles she never had. As bad as that is, a hooker friend attempts to have a lesbian relationship with her, but she rejects the friend. For revenge, the woman sets up her to bed her own father. When her dad finds out he just romped with his own flesh and blood, he freaks, and the film's end comes mercifully with predictable results. Apparently the producers made up their minds not to try to fill in the picture with sexually explicit scenes and go for an 'X' rating, although that may have been their original intent. Actress Forbes was the wife of Cannon Films president Chris Dewey, who in a publicity release for the picture, claimed he wanted his wife to give up her acting career. He might well have persuaded her sooner."
Trailer to
Toys Are Not for Children:
DVD Drive-In has a higher opinion of the film than the Bible of the Midwest: "Toys Are Not for Children makes The Candy Snatchers (1973 / see below) look like It's a Wonderful Life (1946 / trailer) in comparison. There is not one remotely likeable character in this whole film, everyone poor Jamie meets is either miserable, conniving, or oversexed and aching to get into her pants. By the end credits, you are advised to stay away from sharp objects or dangerous medications; you might be left wondering what the point of living is? The poster for this film leads one to believe it should be a skin flick, but nudity and sex is kept to a bare minimum (a few exposed breasts here and there). But even without a liberal dose of sex and violence, Children weaves its spell over the viewer almost effortlessly. This is a gripping, well-acted drama with an excellent script and accomplished directing and editing, not to mention a great theme song. Much like David F. Friedman's Johnny Firecloud (1975 / trailer), this is an underrated gem hiding behind an exploitative title and ad campaign.
Trailer to
The Candy Snatchers:
By the way, as IMDB points out: "Fran Warren, who plays the dramatic role of Edna Godard, was a major recording star in the 40s and 50s and her most famous recording was A Sunday Kind of Love. Her only previous feature film was Abbott and Costello Meet Captain Kidd (1952 / trailer)."
Fran Warren sings A Sunday Kind of Love:
To be continued... next month.
