Short Film: Closed Mondays (USA, 1974)

Let's take a moment to honor the man pictured directly above, the American animator and filmmaker William Gale Vinton (born 17 Nov 1947), who took that final boat trip with Charon almost two months ago on 4 Oct 2018.

From Vinton's humble beginnings as a student at the University of California, Berkeley, in the early sixties, he went on to founding Vinton Studios, which eventually became "a $28-million-a-year enterprise". Unluckily, he lost the firm in 2002 to some bad luck, bad choices, bad investments, and the wrong CEO. (Go here for the full story.) Vinton Studios is now called Laika, and is behind two of our favorite feature movies, Henry Selick's Coraline [2009] and Chris Butler's ParaNorman [2012 / trailer].)

An extra — Vinton Studios also worked on

Michael "I Like Children" Jackson's
music video to Speed Demon,
"the tenth, and last, single to be released from Bad":

Closed Monday is the movie that started Vinton's career, you might say. True, he made early shorts and stuff — e.g., the documentary Gone for a Better Deal or his first animation short, Culture Shock, the release dates of which we could not locate — but Closed Monday is the earliest directorial and/or producer credit listed at the imdb and basically got the ball rolling. Vinton made the short together with the artist Bob Gardner (19 March 1951 – 21 April 2005, poster example below), with whom he toiled together for roughly 14 months. Closed Monday went on to win the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film, beating out such illustrious company as Peter Foldes' short Hunger, our March 2014 Short Film of the Month. (Foldes, by the way, was also behind our September 2015 Short Film of the Month, the disturbing anti-nuke classic, A Short Vision.)

Try as we might, we couldn't locate the original, uncensored version of Closed Monday — somewhere along the way, the words "USUAL CRAP" were deemed unsuitable for the masses and blacked-off of the gallery sign seen at the beginning of the short. Likewise, the main character also never gets around to saying "Hell," as he did once long ago. (To quote Joseph Conrad, "The horror! The horror!")

The narrative is short and simple: a drunken old man wanders into a closed exhibition, where he does not see pink elephants but, instead, is confronted by artwork that seemingly comes alive. Most people see this little short as a humorous example of claymation, but truth be told Closed Monday is very much a horror short, the main character of which does not survive. (The short's duality — humor with an edge of discomfort — is also found in Vinton's later feature-length claymation movie, the rarely screened "children's" movie The Adventures of Mark Twain [1985 / trailer].)

Enjoy.

Will Vinton & Bob Gardner's

Closed Mondays (1974):

Q (USA, 1982)

A.k.a. Q: The Winged Serpent. Larry Cohen's genre masterpiece about a city terrorized by a monster pigeon. Just kidding — about the monster pigeon, that is. In this prime slice of 1980s genre filmmaking, the terror of the New York City's skies is not some monster pigeon dropping birdshit on the Big Apple's denizens, but a huge carnivorous half-reptile and half-bird with a penchant for eating Big Applites. (No, despite the description, Q is not an early Donald Trump bio-flick.)

According to various online sources, including Trailers from Hell, the talented B-movie auteur Cohen (some of his better directorial efforts, all self-scripted, include Hell Up in Harlem [1973 / trailer], Black Caesar [1973 / trailer], It's Alive [1974 / trailer], the absolutely insane God Told Me To [1976 / trailer, with Richard Lynch], The Stuff [1985 / trailer], and The Ambulance [1990 / trailer]) rushed into producing this film after being unceremoniously fired from the far bigger budgeted (and far less successful) Mickey Spillane adaptation, I, the Jury (1982 / trailer).

If that is truly so, genre film fans should be thankful that he got fired from that gig, 'cause Q is superlative cinematic cheese. It is a prime example of what low-budget genre filmmaking should be: in no way boring, tightly scripted, well acted, funny, fun, and with a dash of obligatory (and exploitive) nudity.* Q is like a masterfully layered, multi-level Betty Crocker movie-cake of not only all that, but also an extra topping some truly low-brow stop-motion animation and third-rate greenscreen technology. What's more: the monster lives in the best office building in the world, the Chrysler Building! This film is the bee's knees in spades.

* The last supplied by a topless, sunbathing Bobbie Burns (born Barbara Kossoff, married name Barbara Feilen, aka Robbie Burns, Bobby Burns and Bobbi Burns), a minor bit-part actress long since retired to Southern California who was/is also found in an occasional Golden Age porn movie — she even turns up all of ten seconds as one of the only two females, the other being Charlotte O'Hara (aka Charlotte Lee & Charlotte Leigh) seen in the "classic" gay porn flick Centurians [sic] of Rome (1981 / trailer). In Q, she's around long enough to take off her bikini top and rub in tanning butter before she gets eaten by Q.

Interestingly enough, as obscure as the titular creature might be, Larry Cohen's movie is not the first to have been made featuring the Aztec deity Quetzlcoatl, the "Q" of the title. No, that honor goes to no one less than "Sherman Scott", otherwise known as  Sam Newfield (6 Dec 1899 – 10 Nov 1964), a mostly forgotten poverty row hack director considered one of the most prolific in American film history. Among the well over 250 projects Newfield directed by his retirement (including The Monster Maker [1944]), he also helmed the cheap and idiotic prior Quetzlcoatl flick, The Flying Serpent (1946) — the first and possible only other movie featuring the winged Aztec deity. (At least one online source claims the film inspired Cohen's film, but we have been unable to find irrefutable evidence of this.)

Full movie — Sam Newfield's

The Flying Serpent (1946):

Q starts off with a bloody kick: the flirtations of a window washer (William Pilch) working high up on the Empire State Building are interrupted when he gets beheaded in front of the eyes of the secretary on the other side of the glass. Other mysterious deaths and disappearances follow, leaving Dt. Shepard (David Carradine [8 Dec 1936 – 3 June 2009] of Death Race 2000 [1975 / trailer], Evil Toons [1992 / trailer], Sundown: The Vampire in Retreat [1989 / trailer], Dead & Breakfast [2004 / trailer] and so much more) and Dt. Powell (Richard Roundtree of Shaft [1971 / trailer] and Maniac Cop [1988 / trailer]) tapping in the dark. At the same time, former junkie jailbird jazz musician Jimmy Quinn (Michael Moriarty of Pale Rider 1985 / trailer] and Troll [1976 / trailer]) participates in diamond store robbery that goes wrong, and while on the run finds out that the tip of the Chrysler Building houses the nest (and egg) of the flying monster. Needless to say, the paths of the three protagonists meet.

Wow. Such a tacky plot and then such a tight, fun film. Moriarty is excellent as the weaselly Quinn, and neither Roundtree nor Carradine are too shabby, either. Candy Clark (of The Blob [1988 / trailer] and Cherry Falls [2000 / trailer]), as Quinn's girlfriend Joan, is ultimately lost in the shuffle of the movie, her part both underdeveloped and relatively unimportant. Savior syndrome or not, her relationship with Quinn is as unbelievable as the size of her New York City apartment — even back when New York was cheap[er], no waitress could throw an apartment the size of hers. Her passing mention of past occurrences of Quinn hitting her underscores his general ass-wipe despicability, as does his childlike joy when Q rids him of two problematic mobsters on his tail and his general inability for compassion for others. The guy's a slimeball, and perhaps the biggest flaw of the film is that he survives until the final credits, but then, reality-based characterization is common to many Larry Cohen movies; he seems to know that being an asshole doesn't mean you'll do badly in the end. (Hell, in the world of today, being a lying sleazebag or asshole gets you a position in the White House, if not the position in the White House, not to mention on the Supreme Court.)

Rest assured that for all the humor since accrued by the dated special effects, Larry Cohen did not make Q as a straight-faced horror-fantasy movie: it is very much an intentional black comedy, and all the better for it. Time and again, he juxtaposes incongruent scenes and genial dialogue that can't help but instigate a laugh, especially since it is all played so straight.

If you have never seen a Cohen flick, Q is a good place to start — and if you don't give a flying fuck about Cohen or his films but just want a fun flick or some prime 80s cinematic trash, Q is likewise a great genre film that guarantees 93 minutes of fun genre entertainment. Give it a go.

The fine poster above is by the US-American artist Bob Gleason, who is probably most famous for his work on the one sheet for John Carpenter's Halloween (1978 / trailer). The artist lives in Portland, Oregon, and has an official website that features galleries of the fine art paintings he now concentrates on but makes no mention of past work in painting film posters. He now paints, on commission, something known as "actual reproductions" of historic, "favorite master works" (not interesting) as well as cityscapes utilizing a palette straight out of a psilocybin trip (far more interesting).

Babes of Yesteryear – Uschi Digard, Part I: 1968-69

Babes of Yesteryear: Within the world of exploitation and cult film, there is an inordinate amount of women who had their 15 seconds in exploitation and, for whatever reason — no talent, terrible accent, bad luck, the films they took part in — never made the jump from C, D and Z films to B movies, let alone A movies. We don't mean the Scream Queens of today, like the talented Tiffany Shepis (see: Corpses [2004], The Hazing [2004], The Prometheus Project [2010] and so much more); we mean the women of the Golden Age of (Modern) Exploitation, the  60s and 70s, many of whom quickly left the business when softcore went hard and the willingness to do nudity was no longer enough to get you another rent-paying film shoot. Most simply disappeared: prior to the internet, it was relatively impossible to know whether they simply retired, died natural or unnatural deaths, or seriously vanished (as did Lorna Maitland — see: The Rialto Report).*

* Today, of course, it is a bit easier to find out that, for example, Rene Bond (11 Oct 1950 – 2 June 1996) died of liver cirrhosis and Bambi Allen (2 May 1938 – 21 Jan 1973) of cancer, Pat Barrington (16 Oct 1939 – 1 Sept 2014) eventually ended up in Florida and obscurity and lung cancer, Jeannie Bell married into riches and left the biz, Tamara Dobson (14 May 1947 – 2 Oct 2006) died of multiple sclerosis, or that Shari Eubank ended up teaching in Illinois and Monica Gayle ended up married with children and now lives in a section of the Valley that once belonged to Edgar Rice Burroughs.

In Babes of Yesteryear, our new and irregular and PI feature, a wasted life takes a look at the filmography of the underappreciated actresses cum sex bombs of low-culture cinema. Our choice of whom we look at is idiosyncratic and entirely our own — but they are/were babes, one and all. (Though, being who we are, we might also take a look at some actor cum beefcake, if we feel like it.) Some may still be alive, others not.

In any event, 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...

As the photo below and blog-entry title above reveal, we're starting with one of the ultimate cult babes ever, a woman who needs no introduction to any and all red-blooded, heterosexual American male whose hormonal memory goes further back than the start of the 80s: the great Uschi Digard (aka Astrid | Debbie Bowman | Brigette | Briget | Britt | Marie Brown | Clarissa | Uschi Dansk | Debbie | Ushi Devon | Julia Digaid | Uschi Digaid | Ushi Digant | Ursula Digard | Ushie Digard | Ushi Digard | Alicia Digart | Uschi Digart | Ushi Digart | Ushi Digert | Uschi Digger | Beatrice Dunn | Fiona | Francine Franklin | Gina | Glenda | Sheila Gramer | Ilsa | Jobi | Cynthia Jones | Karin | Astrid Lillimor | Astrid Lillimore | Lola | Marie Marceau | Marni | Sally Martin | Mindy | Olga | Ves Pray | Barbara Que | Ronnie Roundheels | Sherrie | H. Sohl | Heide Sohl | Heidi Sohler | U. Heidi Sohler | Sonja | Susie | Euji Swenson | Pat Tarqui | Joanie Ulrich | Ursula | Uschi | Ushi | Mishka Valkaro | Elke Vann | Elke Von | Jobi Winston | Ingred Young… and probably more).

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 60's & early 70's 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 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.

Over the next year, we will take an irregular, meandering, year-by-year look at the films she participated in from 1968 to 2008. (OK, she retired long before that, but people still find ways of working her into their movies.) For the most part, reels and shorts won't be looked at. As many of her films are given different release dates by different sites, we in no way claim 100% validity of the dates we supply.

Uschi Digard, Part One: 1968-69

I Love You, Alice B. Toklas!

(1968, dir. Hy Averback)

"The saga of Harold...from dedicated lawyer to dedicated dropout." 

Trailer to

I Love You, Alice B. Toklas!

More than one website, but not the imdb or the Uschi website, claim that Uschi "began, oddly enough, in mainstream, with a cameo in I Love You Alice B. Toklas! with Peter Sellers (8 Sept 1925 – 24 July 1980). [Tales from the Kryptonian]" 
I Love You Alice B. Toklas! — one of TV director Hy Averback's (21 Oct 1920 – 14 Oct 1997) rare forays into feature film — is one of the many decidedly poorly dated comedies from the sixties that saw mainstream Hollywood trying to be hip and failing miserably. Or at least the movie failed for us, as we remember walking out on the movie when we caught it years ago at a retro house. We much prefer Averback's feature film foray of the previous year, Chambers of Horrors (1966).*

* OK, so Chambers was originally filmed as a TV pilot — but it got released into theaters and never became a series. 

Scene from

 Chambers of Horrors (1966):

"The film's title is a tribute to Gertrude Stein's lifelong partner, Alice B. Toklas, who published a cookbook in 1954 that contained the first printed recipe for hash fudge. In one of the movie's most famous scenes Harold Fine unknowingly serves marijuana-laced brownies baked by Nancy to his parents and fiancée. [imdb]"
Believe us: if you follow Toklas's recipe as written, you'll love it! We say "it" and not "them" because the original recipe, as given to Toklas by Brion Gyson and referred to in the paragraph above, is for fudge, not brownies. Here's a scan of the original recipe as taken from Riverfront Times:

 

The Berkeley Library, where one reads books, mentions that "as Frank Thompson, in his article, Movies on Drugs, writes, 'marijuana is an entirely positive force in Toklas; everyone who uses it (even unwittingly Sellers' aging parents) emerges more thoughtful, aware, spontaneous — freer.' I was hard-pressed to find films in any of the other historical periods that portray pot in such a benevolent light. Even Cheech and Chong are shown to be at best dull-witted and slow."

In his three-star review of the movie from 1968, Roger Ebert explains the basic plot: "Sellers […] plays a single man of about 35, a lawyer with a great respect for appearances, who finally agrees out of politeness to marry the girl he's been dating for several years (Joyce Van Patten of Monkey Shines [1988 / trailer]). She's the sort of girl who can't wait to leave her fiancé, once he's popped the question, so she can telephone her mother and tell her the news: Enough said. But Sellers gets rescued from the altar all the same, after his own mother (Jo Van Fleet [29 Dec 1915 – 10 June 1996] of The Tenant [1976 / trailer]) sends him on an expedition to find his brother (David Arkin [24 Dec 1941 – 14 Jan 1991 (suicide)]). The brother has become a hippie and attends the funeral of a family friend wearing the Hopi Indian burial costume. He also brings along a really good-looking chick (Leigh Taylor-Young of Soylent Green [1973]) and Sellers falls for her and, by extension, for the hippie life. […]" Enough said.

Well, not really. Ebert at least also pointed out the obvious: "Unfortunately, the movie's general approach to hippiedom is what we've come to dread. Hippies wear funny clothes, sleep on the stove, don't wash, read the Los Angeles Free Press, bake pot brownies, put up posters everywhere and operate with a sort of mindless, directionless love ethic. So the movie becomes conventional after all."

 

Both David Arkin and Leigh Taylor-Young were making their first credited appearance in a feature film. Leigh Taylor Young, seen below, is actually rather good as the ditzy object of Sellers' affections. She has since become a minister for the Movement of Spiritual Inner Awareness. At her website, Taylor Young says, "Although it was 1967, I felt very removed from the hippie phenomenon. I had been working non-stop for two years as a professional actress with a heavy schedule. My focus had been my career. I had never said 'groovy' in my life, or worn a short skirt, or smoked anything at all. In fact, I was still wearing little white gloves, stockings and long skirts. I loved only classical music, didn't drink or swear, and was still a virgin at 21." (She was 23 while filming.)

In any event, Uschi should be there somewhere in the background. Should anyone want to bother watching this movie and keep an eagle eye, let us know where she is if you see her.

Sappho, Darling

(1968, dir. Gunnar Steele)

The films that Uschi Digard may have appeared in prior to arriving in the US are, basically, unknown today, but prior to coming to Hollyweird, Uschi supposedly made some softcore erotic films in Sweden, of which some might think this is one. Sappho, Darling is, however, decidedly faux-Swedish, complete with stock footage. Though not currently (1 Nov 2018) listed in her credit list at the imdb, Uschi lists this film on her filmography at her website.

Sappho, Darling, supposedly produced by some guy named "Hal Senter", was written by an American, the great Albert Zugsmith (24 Apr 1910 – 26 Oct 1993), the producer of many a memorable movie, including Orson Welles' Touch of Evil (1958 / trailer), Jack Arnold's The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957 / trailer), High School Confidential (1958 / trailer), Russ Meyer's Fanny Hill (1964 / trailer), one of Vincent Price's odder projects, Confessions of an Opium Eater (1962 / Trailer from Hell), and so much more. Director Gunnar Steele, assuming the name is real, never made another movie.

NSFW Trailer to

Sappho, Darling: 

TCM has the plot: "Because of her strict upbringing, Sappho (Carol Young) refuses to become sexually intimate with her boyfriend, Sven (Alyn Darnay). Brigitte (Yvonne D'Angers), who suffered an unhappy sexual initiation in a gang rape, becomes Sappho's roommate. His desire frustrated, Sven attempts unsuccessfully to take Sappho by force; when he leaves, Luana (Sally Sanford) and her girl friend try, also unsuccessfully, to seduce the two girls. Arriving to apologize for his behavior, Sven discovers the women together and leaves, appalled at the thought that his lover is a lesbian. Brigitte visits his apartment to convince him that he is mistaken, that Sappho truly loves him but is unable to overcome her fear of sex. Returning home, she surprises her new boyfriend attempting to rape Sappho. The two lonely girls are drawn together, and their intimacy culminates in a single homosexual experience. Sappho wants only to live with Brigitte, but Brigitte is attracted to men, and refuses. When Sven calls and asks Sappho to meet him at the beach, the two girls make the trip together, torn by doubts. Sappho at last runs off alone, unable to choose between her two loves."

At Something Weird, Lisa calls the movie a "tender tale of lesbian loving" and "exploitation that tries to be 'art-house' — and, for that matter, even pretends to be Swedish — Sappho Darling combines male fantasies of rape and lesbianism with ridiculous dialogue, especially when uttered by Miss D'Angers, to make this marvelously schizoid experience. Adding to the fun are bits by exploitation veteran Gary Kent [and] the always welcome Uschi Digart."

Tehran-born Yvonne D'Angers (2 Sept 1944 – 10 June 2009) was a popular topless dancer in America who gained infamy in San Francisco along with other dancers such as Carol Doda (29 Aug 1937 – 9 Nov 2015) during the third quarter of the 20^th century. Like Doda, D'Angers was involved in obscenity trials in San Francisco in the '60s. In 1966, she even chained herself to the Golden Gate Bridge as a protest against her ordered deportation to Iran, an order which was overturned in 1968. D'Angers was immortalized by Diane Arbus (14 Mar 1923 – 26 July 1971) in Arbus's famous photo, seen above, entitled Topless dancer in her dressing room, San Francisco, Cal. As for Gary Kent, among the many notable disasterpieces he participated in, special mention must be given to Al Adamson's Dracula vs. Frankenstein (1971).

The news advertisement shown above was for a showing at the Floridian Todd Theatre. The movie itself can currently be found online for free at Film Izle.

Another Sappho, Darling trailer
(with three other films):

The Big Snatch

(1968, dir. "Ronnie Runningboard")

Aka The Big Catch, as one too many newspaper found the intended implications of the title of this no-budget roughie a tad too racy for publication — something they would surely no longer think, seeing that it is fully presidential to grab women by their pussy. This Big Snatch, in any event, is not based on the even more-so forgotten 1958 crime novel of the same name, or even the vintage trash novel by Rod Gray (images below). "Rod Gray", by the way, is generally accepted as a pseudonym of no one less than Gardner Fox (20 May 1911 – 24 Dec 1986), the co-creator of DC Comics heroes the Flash, Hawkman, Doctor Fate, and the original Sandman.

The imdb and other sources list this David F. Friedman production as a 1971 release, but on her website Uschi claims it to be a 1968 production. While Uschi could be wrong — the reliability of her website filmography is often questionable — it is entirely possible that the more-common 1971 listing is due to the movie being confused with Mark Hunter's 1971 even more trashy "crime" movie of the same name, The Big Snatch, a sleazy hardcore one-day wonder so obscure we couldn't locate a poster online, assuming it had one (we could, however, find the film itself at Classic Porn).

The artwork of the above Lady from L.U.S.T book was supplied by yet another unjustly unknown artist, Issac Paul Rader. Go here for more examples of his cover art women.
The "direction" of this Big Snatch movie here, a David Friedman production, is credited to one "Ronnie Runningboard", a pseudonym usually used by the obscure Dan Martin, whose short (known) career in Z-films included roles in five Byron Mabe (10 April 1932 – 13 May 2001) movies from 1968 and the direction of one other movie, The Mermaid (1973). Byron Mabe is generally considered The Big Snatch's co-director, while numerous online sources lacking documentation claim that Dan Martin was, at the time of his sleaze-film career, a deputy sheriff in Los Angeles, thus his use of a fake name.

Trash Film Guru has the "plot": "The Big Snatch centers around the hare-brained scheme of two truck-driving yokels (ringleader Bart, played by a guy calling himself 'Harry Chest,' and dim-witted sidekick Momo, played by a guy calling himself — well, 'Momo') to kidnap five beautiful young co-eds and turn them into their own personal low-rent harem. The gals spend a pretty good chunk of the flick stuck inside a drained-out swimming pool, then they all get raped in turn […] and then the industrious gals actually do manage to effect an escape en masse, whereupon they immediately strangle Momo to death before twisting and crushing Bart's cock with a pliers and then tossing him down onto a dirty old mattress and 'gang raping' him for about the final 30 minutes of the film, although I have no idea how his 'junior member' was even supposed to be functioning by that point."

A Scene from

The Big Snatch:

If this no-budget film enjoys any fame at all, it is infamy. As the enjoyable sleazy blog Sleazy Pictures says, "There are trashy movies and then there are movies so trashy the sleaze goes right through the roof into the stratosphere. This is one of *those* movies. It looks extremely cheap (not surprising since the budget was just 11 thousand dollars), has awful acting and photography and much of the time the 'rapes' seem a little too enjoyable for the 'victim,' but this is amusing enough to pass the time, most of the females look good and there's a mean-spirited twist at the end that's kind of good. Everyone was so embarrassed by this they used fake names and the credits are hilarious. The cameraman is 'Otto Focus,' the sound was done by 'Less Noise' and the grip was 'Jim Nasium.' […] It's certainly worth a gander if you like this kind of stuff."
Expect a "twist" ending of the type only a man would think of (but then, the whole film is like that). Uschi, by the way, is credited as "Barbara Que"; former & forgotten Z-film nubile Peggy Church, of the fan-favorite The All-American Girl (1973 / spanky-spanky) and Bethel Buckalew's The Pig-Keeper's Daughter (1972 / trailer / full film), is credited as "Rita Book", and Jayne Tsentis as "Nancy Nice". Tracy Handfuss and one-shot Ginnie Kindall may have or may not have used their real names.

Peggy Church, as the movie's virgin, is the focus of the movie's most infamous scene. As Don the Deviate once asked at Something Weird on a now-deleted page, "Steamed clams, anyone?": "Picture a pretty young virgin spread-eagled over your car's over-heated radiator. The radiator cap is removed, the engine revved, and boiling hot steam belches out of it creating one percolating pussy! This is an image to conjure with, folks. And this is the image that'll stay with you long after viewing The Big Snatch, a mean and nasty ultra-sexy roughie from the era that made political incorrectness an art form."
And from the era when ugly men also did limp, full frontal nudity… which is found in many a film throughout Uschi's career.

The Kill

(1968, dir. Gary Graver)
 

Aka Blood Hunger and, in a re-cut and shortened (from approx. 60 min to 45 min) version, Reservoir Cats. Written and directed by the once-omnipresent Gary Graver (20 July 1938 - 16 Nov 2006), a cinematographer cum scriptwriter cum director cum what-job-you-got? known for working with only the best: Orson Welles, Fred Olan Ray, Albert Pyun, Tobe Hooper, Jim Wynorski, Al Adamson, David DeCoteau, Curtis Harrington, Paul Hunt and way more. As "Robert McCallum", Graver also had a productive career as a director of hardcore porn.

The Kill was produced by "the elusive Ed De Priest", and somewhere in it Uschi shows up (un-credited) as a hitchhiker. The image below, however, taken from Boopedia, is not from the actual movie but is of the movie's actual "star", Antoinette Maynard (aka Bonnie Fisher, Anna Lopez, Ann Toinette & Jane Weinstein [no relation to Harvey]).

Women in Prison Films, which caught Reservoir Cats, says: "This is a strange movie. It appears someone took an old 70s porno, cut it into a tit flick, and added hilarious voiceovers every now and then. If you want an action movie avoid this. If you want to see a tit flick with dialog so ridiculous it's funny then watch this." 

A scene from 

The Kill:

Bleeding Skull, which watched Blood Hunger, would probably concur with WIP, as they say: "If Buster Keaton made a madcap sexploitation noir about horny broads and cars that never run out of gas, this might be it. Charlie Apple's voiceover is ripped straight out of an Ed Wood sleaze novel. […] My guess is that Graver didn't like the script and tried to salvage it with a voiceover. And we're all better for it. Graver clearly had fun while making this film, and maybe he was a little drunk, too. Blood Hunger makes little sense, but it doesn't matter. It's a solid piece of entertainment that delivers. But what's most incredible about Blood Hunger is the soundtrack. The sound effects used in the sex scenes include creaking doors, whirring wind, bugle calls, extremely loud crickets, ragtime piano, grinding metal gears, and the dreaded jazz flute. Pretty much every random sound effect is used in this movie. So while Blood Hunger is fun to watch, it's even more fun to listen to."

 

The plot of The Kill, as supplied by TCM: "Antoinette hires down-and-out Private Detective Charlie Apple (Walt Phillips of Erika's Hot Summer [1971 / Erika nude]) to find her brother Mickey after some of Mickey's associates, heroin smugglers, rape her for trying to persuade him to quit the racket. Antoinette gives Charlie a $100 retainer and seduces him. Charlie goes to Mickey's apartment and finds a dead woman there. Mickey arrives, and the two fight until Charlie is knocked out. He regains consciousness in the gangsters' warehouse and, discovering himself tied up, telephones Antoinette for help. She comes to the warehouse and frees Charlie; the gang returns; and they chase Charlie and Antoinette into a gravel pit. Antoinette is carried off while Charlie fights it out with one of the mob. Kruger, the gang leader, telephones Mickey and instructs him to kill Charlie. Mickey arranges to meet Kruger at a deserted beach where there will be a $1 million heroin delivery; he also sends Candy, his new mistress, to search Charlie's office. Charlie walks in while she is rifling his desk. He wins her confidence by making love to her, and she tells him of the beach rendezvous. Charlie goes to the beach, and there a violent showdown occurs."

Among his many projects, Gary Graver went on to also work on an occasional horror movie such as The Attic (1980 / trailer), Trick or Treats (1982 / trailer), and Evil Spirits  (1990 / trailer).

Bedtime Surprise

(1968, dir. Unknown)
 

Numerous websites claim the elusive "Gunnar Steele" of Sappho, Darling directed this movie; some even claim that Bedtime Surprise is actually an AKA title for Steele's earlier feature-length flick — but DVD Drive-In reveals everything that is actually known about the stag short: "For anyone who wants even MORE Uschi […] Uschi Digart's Bedtime Surprise sees Uschi smothering a lucky bastard with her bombastic mammaries and giving him a handjob before jumping astride him! It's pretty graphic softcore stuff, with Uschi really doing a rough ride on the guy, screaming and flipping her hair around, looking fabulous with her breasts flopping out of her bustier! It's pretty damn funny, with great classical music cues!"

Since it's a short, we normally wouldn't include it in a career review of this ilk, but we figure it's as good of an excuse as any to present a photo of Uschi modeling questionable fashionwear. Fashionwear that, obviously enough, would be a perfect gift for your Trump-voting family member. Righteous!

The Madam

(1969, dir. Don Brown)

 

The book cover above and the movie at hand have nothing to do with each other, but we liked the cover art by Robert Bonfis so we thought we would use it, especially since we couldn't locate an "original" poster to this cheap and pointless softcore one-day wonder. Previously thought lost, The Madam has been rediscovered and repackaged with two other non-Uschi movies, L'amour de femme (1969 / film) and Take Them As They Are (1970), for further exploitation. (See image below.) Uschi has relatively meaty if un-credited role in The Madam as "Sissy".

DVD Drive-In, which says that The Madam is "nothing special, but to see yet another obscure Uschi film is still cause for some celebration", has the "plot": "After her car breaks down, Sissy hitches a ride with hippie biker John (Garrett Lambert), who takes her to her mother's home. It turns out to be a very lavish whorehouse, where mom is the Madam and Sissy oversees the girls. John samples the wares of Sally, a buck-toothed cutie (Terri Johnson) with a huge bouffant wig, and since he can't pay for a room for the night, he acts as bartender and auditions a prospective prostitute in a very noisy and apparently drug-induced scene (!). Finally, Sissy takes John for a spin in the bedroom and when Mom discovers the two, the pair ride off into the sunset on his motorcycle. Ah, romance."

The iafd gushes, "Hot, stacked, and always ready, watch Uschi's perfect tits and ass wiggle their way through this action-packed feature!" But over at the imdb, lor of New York, that great connoisseur of porn, is less easily satisfied: "It's one of her least interesting titles. […] The simulated sex is desultory […] Resulting film is the typical mish-mash of fairly convincing cunnilingus scenes, very fake fellatio simulation, and the dirty feet on screen to prove they were in a big hurry to wrap this up. Both men and women display full frontal nudity, the sign of 'quality' for 1969." 

In real life, the hippie biker "John", or Garrett Lambert, now hawks self-help stuff. Retired from smut by 1971, he resurfaced briefly in 2005 to appear in the truly terrible direct-to-video cheapie, The Horror Within.

Roughly 3 minutes of Garrett Lambert

in a terrible D2V flick:

The Ribald Tales of Robin Hood

(1969, dir. Richard Kanter & Erwin C. Dietrich)
 

Aka The Erotic Adventures of Robin Hood. A David F. Friedman production that the great Erwin C. Dietrich (4 Oct 1930 – 15 March 2018) eventually brought to German-speaking Europe as Robin Hood und seine lüsternen Mädchen.

Watch the

Full Movie:

Though not [currently] listed on her list of credits at the imdb, Uschi has this movie in her filmography at her website. According to various sites, including Cinemorgue Wiki, she is indeed there: As Robin's mother, she is "strangled by one of Lawrence Adams' soldiers in the castle. (Nudity alert: Topless.)" According to the imdb, however, Robin's mom is played by "Barbara Sanders" — and, indeed, Robin's mom in the film does not look at all like Uschi.
The advertisement below, like so many ads used in this blog series, was found at Cinema Treasures.

In yet another typical case of online sources supplying conflicting info, emovieposter says Uschi Digard is billed as "Ingrid Young", whom the imdb claims is Robin's sister. But again, Robin's sister does not look at all like Uschi, either.

So, though we don't know where Uschi is, and in fact doubt that she is even there, we do know that Lynn Cartwright, the switchboard operator of The Wasp Woman (1959), is there as "Danielle Carver" playing Lady Sallyforth; Bambi Allen (of H.G. Lewis's Miss Nymphet's Zap-In [1970] and so much more) is also on hand as Polly. Noteworthy: as mentioned in Jerry L. Schneider's book The True Story of Ray "Crash" Corrigan, Ray "Crash" Corrigan (14 Feb 1902 – 10 Aug 1976, of The Monster Maker [1944]) is there for his first appearance in an "X" movie playing Robin's Dad, billed as "Ray Benard". (Saying "first appearance", of course, implies he made more such movies, which we don't think he did — and, really, this softcore movie is not X-rated as we know it.)

As so often, TCM has the plot: "While King Richard is imprisoned by the Normans, his evil brother John (Lawrence Adams) usurps the throne and wreaks pillage, rape, and oppressive taxation on the populace. John and his men forcibly enter the castle of young Robin's father and kill the Earl (Ray "Benard" Corrigan) when he refuses to pledge allegiance. Young Robin (Scott Sizemore) watches the brutes rape and kill his mother, and he vows revenge against John and his band. Five years later young Robin is known as Robin Hood (Ralph Jenkins), champion of the common people, and he has cleverly resisted John's attempts to capture him. Lady Sallyforth, the sister of John and Richard who has allied herself with John, sends Maid Marion (Dee Lockwood), Robin Hood's childhood sweetheart, into Sherwood Forest to lure Robin Hood out of the forest. Robin Hood's men take Maid Marion to their leader, and the lovers are reunited. Marion relates to Robin Hood the evil king's efforts to capture him; and Robin allows himself to be captured. He confronts John and leads his men in a spirited battle in which John is killed and his allies subdued, thus restoring Richard to the throne. [Film may include scenes of nudity, sexual intercourse, fellatio, and torture.]"

At All Movie, Dan Pavlides points out that "Sherwood Forest in medieval times is the scene of the erotic and exotic story of Robin Hood and his merry men and women. The reason everyone is so merry is they spend the live-long day and night engaging in their favorite sexual experiences including sadism, lesbianism and homosexuality. Strictly an exploitation feature with crude jokes and nudity galore."

The Master Beater

(1969, writ & dir. Charles Carmello)

Aka Hot Sex Tramp, Masterbeater and The Dirty Hawk, this is seemingly Charles Carmello's only directorial effort. He may or may not have gone on to become a playwright and novelist. This B&W artsploitation roughie is the feature-film debut of John Savage (of Alien Lockdown / Creature [2004] and American Strays [1996]), and also features Uschi somewhere (billed either as "Sherry" or "Ursula", we don't know) as a model, we assume nude.

One Sheet Index, which lists the movie as from 1965, has the plot: "[…] Known as the Master Beater he was a cold and brutal man. His only purpose in life was to inflict pain and degradation on his fellow man. The Master Beater was an expert exploiter of human weaknesses. The Master Beater could make a man sell his wife for a bag of powdered dreams. The Master Beater could inflict upon women the most unbelievable pain and they would ask for more. No woman could resist the overpowering evil of the Master Beater. The Master Beater would allow no woman to sleep with a man not even her husband unless her price was high and he received half. To the Master Beater life had no meaning without the joy of violence and the pleasure of pain mixed with beauty of pure depravity. To those the Master Beater loved he would take into his private world of love and pain. And to those the Master Beater hates he kills and kills and kills."

The newspaper advertisement above features Gerard Damiano's mostly forgotten early sex film Teenie Tulip (1970 / film), which, like The Master Beater, was produced distributed by Cinex Film Industries and distributed by Cinex International Film Distributors. It is relatively easy to assume that the unknown second feature in the advertisement, The Master, might well be The Master Beater. 

The Game Is Sex

(1969, dir. Harry Wuest)

Aka The Game Is Set, The Game of Sex, and (in Germany) Im Bett der nackten Schwestern (i.e., "In the Bed of the Naked Sisters"). Released by William Mishkin Motion Pictures, which, along with some of the other names involved, would indicate that this seems to be a NYC exploiter. That makes Uschi's appearance somewhere in the movie somewhat odd, but she does have it listed on her website. She's billed as "H. Sohl".

In any event, the movie is not based on the sixties sleaze book of the same name, which we present below only because it has great cover art — and because one of the depicted guys looks just like William Shatner, whom some of you out there might know from the great Roger Corman message movie, The Intruder (1962).

Director Harry Wuest may not exactly have a common name, but we doubt that this Wuest is the same Wuest as the now deceased musician Harry Wuest. But, as they say, who knows.

To loosely translate what is written at the German website Kino, "Im Bett der nackten Schwestern ["In the Bed of the Naked Sisters"] is a (s)exploitation film about two different sisters who are destroyed by their respective relationships with the same man. Andre (Michael J. Canavan) writes for TV and seems to be an extremely imaginative guy. After a huge fight with his lover Irene ('Irene Rosetti'), who accuses him of not allowing her to have a life of her own, she splits for spontaneous vacation alone. Andre's secretary Nancy (Susana March), who is also Irene's sister, is more than willing to take Irene's place in Andre's bed in the meantime. Over the course of time, Andre continues to pursue a double relationship — until one of the sisters commits suicide." (A rather tame plot description in comparison to the one found at TCM.)

Rob Craig mentions in his book Gutter Auteur: The Films of Andy Milligan, "Director Harry Wuest went on to make the fabulously deranged She Mob (1968 / poker scene), considered one of the most outré low-budget sexploitation films ever lensed." (Poster below.)

The actress "Irene Rosetti" is actually one Irene DeBari, a former Joseph W. Sarno film regular — she's found in Scarf of Mist Thigh of Satin (1967), The Sex Cycle (1967), Anything for Money (1967), Come Ride the Wild Pink Horse (1967), Bed of Violence (1967), Deep Inside (1968), The Wall of Flesh (1968), and Passion in Hot Hollows (1969 / scene / full film) — who's still active today as a character and stage actress.

The Scavengers

(1969, dir. Lee Frost)

Aka Ambush, The Grabbers & Rebel Vixens — and a few other names. Written by Bob Cresse (19 June 1936 – 6 April 1998). A mid-career disasterpiece of sleaze from two exploitation greats, Lee Frost (14 Aug 1935 - 25 May 2007) and Bob Cresse, who went on to regurgitate some truly influential movies, the most infamous of which is surely the woman-in-prison film, Love Camp 7 (1969 / trailer).

Two years after the initial release of The Scavengers, it was re-edited and, with new hardcore sex scenes added, re-released as The Grabbers.

In 1970, however, still as The Scavangers, it played second fiddle to Van Guylder's The Bang-Bang Gang (1970 / film) at the Michigan Theatre. And who can forget the Hues Corporation?

Rock the Boat:

Ushi Digart is there in The Scavangers playing Lucille. There used to be a trailer on YouTube, since deleted, and you could even see her smiling face (and cleavage) on it; also of slight note is the presence of Paul Hunt as Sgt. Ivers. You can still find the trailer at Something Weird.

TCM, as always, has the most comprehensive plot description: "Confederate Capt. Steven Harris (John Bliss) and 10 survivors from the Army of Tennessee who are assigned to rob a Union gold shipment being delivered to the Army of the Potomac and scheduled to pass through the town of Tazewell, proceed with their plans, unaware that the Civil War has ended. The men invade Tazewell, take over a saloon, shoot the bartender, and lock up the prostitutes. Harris tortures Union Lieutenant Nelson (Warren James) and learns that no gold will be shipped, the truce having been signed. Harris tries unsuccessfully to rape Faith (Maria Lease), Nelson's fiancée, and he gives Faith's Negro maid, Nancy (Roda Spain), to his men for their own sport. Nancy kills one of the men with a knitting needle and flees to nearby Everett, a Negro tent city founded by freed slaves. The liberated slaves attack the rebels with a vengeance…"

10K Bullets may lament that although "The brothel scene is one of the highlights, then the busty bar girls, including Uschi Digart, vanish away upstairs for the rest of the film", they nevertheless offer praise for the movie: "Despite prior output by the team of director Lee Frost and writer Bob Cresse, this is not sexploitation. The nudity is mostly obscured and the rape scenes are not meant to be titillating. Shootouts are well-staged, and though the fistfights obviously pull punches, the action is fast and furious (and therefore screen time is brief). The script is actually quite good and not only contains some delirious exchanges of dialog, but the conclusion is both memorable and thought-provoking."

Has nothing to do with the film —

The Scavengers play
But if You're Happy:

The actress playing Faith, Maria Lease, also found in Al Adamson's fun trash classic Dracula Vs. Frankenstein (1971), went on to a short career directing mostly porno films, but in 1991 she did toss out one non-porn horror flick, Dolly Dearest (trailer).

Trailer to
The Scavengers:

The Cut-Throats

(1969, writ. & dir. John Hayes)

Aka Cut-Throat KommandoSS. New York-born John Hayes (1 March 1930 - 21 Aug 2000), who wrote and directed The Cut-Throats, had a long and varied exploitation career (writer, director, editor, producer, and occasional actor). Long six feet under, he has yet to see his intriguing oeuvre be reappraised. One of his early projects, the short film The Kiss (1958, see further below), was even nominated for an Academy Award for Best Live Action Short Film (it lost out to Walt Disney's The Grand Canyon [full film]). 

Full short —
The Kiss (1958):

In this, The Cut-Throats, one of his mid-career grindhouse projects, he turned to the ever-popular genre Nazisploitation and made a low-rate, five-guy version of The Dirty Dozen (1967 / trailer). Uschi, in an un-credited role, pops up to play the "German General's Secretary". (That's her below, proving that typing is not a necessity when it comes to being a good secretary.)

Fuckshit! — The Home Video Review says, "[…] It's time to talk about the tit shots (scratch that) I mean plot I mean tit shots. There really is no separation from the two at all so far as this film is concerned as we see tits and ass about every 8-10 minutes here (and that's an overly generous estimate, I think it's more like 4-6). It all takes place somewhere deep in the non-existent scrubland of Germany in 1945 near a super secret somebody's grandparents ranch house Nazi base camp. A pointless character introduction is used as an excuse for a sex scene within the first four minutes of the movie. Flash forward to later and a rogue US Army officer is setting up a dirty half dozen type mission to raid said ranch house secret base. Unbeknownst to our would-be badasses (except for the man behind the operation), there is a cache of jewels hidden somewhere on the base worth a million bucks. How does the audience find this out before anyone else? A sex scene of course! I'm not even sure it can be called a sex scene, it involves a topless woman giving a fat Nazi officer a massage in a sauna then fucking his left foot. NOT JOKING. There actually really is no specific plot to speak of. But there are lots of tits, ass, and even a brief burlesque show for good measure. Oh, and I nearly forgot the erotic massage involving heavy sprinklings of that all too sexy substance talcum powder. The rest of the film could easily be summed up in the following sentence: 'Ass and titties, ass ass and titties, shooting, death, ride into the sunset.' THE END."

Third Eye Cinema muses, "Are there really films with no purpose to exist? No plot, no characterization, nothing but a few naked and willing girls and a few uniforms from the prop department? Apparently so, as Hayes delivers a plotless, pointless, nearly dialogue-free waste of good celluloid […]. Nobody even tries to act, which is unsurprising given that there may be about a double-spaced page worth of lines in the film […]. Interestingly, Hayes makes the American soldiers ten times more unsympathetic than their Nazi opponents!"

Despite this, or maybe specifically because of it, Rock! Shock! Pop! still thinks that "[…] the movie remains an enjoyable slice of trashy drive-in style cinematic sex and violence. It's filled to the brim with potholes, historical inaccuracies and wonderful breasts. As such, it's worth seeing. Oh and if that weren't enough, Sandy Carey pops up here too."

 

"Pops up" is what she does indeed, as "Blonde selling a Painting", in what could be her feature-film debut. Carey (aka Sandee Carey, Alva Harris, Lois Klinger, Geri Sheraton, Sylvia Duval, Sandra Carey, Sandi Carey, Daisy Lay) had a roughly 10-year-long career in exploitation and sex films, and seems to have left the biz after a non-sex scene in Debbie Duz Dishes III (1987 / full NSFW film). Among her films of note are some oddities like the first fembot movie ever made, Too Much Loving aka Robot Love Slaves (1971 / full NSFW film), Eric Jeffrey Haims' softcore porn horror The Jekyll and Hyde Portfolio (1971 / full film), the porn horror The Psychiatrist (1978), Perry Dell's comedy Deep Jaws (1976 / scene), William A. Levey's Wham! Bam! Thank You Spaceman! (1975 / trailer), Al Adamson's The Naughty Stewardesses (1974 / trailer), Stewart Malleon's inept The Curse of the Alpha Stone (1972), Gary Graver's And When She Was Bad... (1973 / scene), The Amorous Adventures of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza (1976, with Haji), Stu Segall's anti-classic Drive-In Massacre (1976 / trailer), Time Walker (1982 / trailer), and more.

6.10 Minutes of

 The Cut-Throat KommandoSS:

 

The Marauders

(1969, dir. Cari Lutz)

Not to be confused with MGM's 1955 western of the same name — poster above — featuring everyone's favorite bad guy Dan Duryea (23 Jan 1907 - 7 June 1968, of The Burglar [1957]). Nor should it be confused with the even earlier Hopalong Cassidy movie (1947) of the same name, aka King of the Range, poster and film below.

Hopalong Cassidy in

The Marauders:

Both Uschi and the imdb list a movie entitled The Marauders in her filmogrpahy, but this obscure exploiter, apparently the only directorial credit of Cari Lutz, is equally apparently also a "lost" film (so check your attic). The Cari Lutz credited as the director by the imdb is probably not the film's director, as she would have been around seven years old when this movie was made.
The plot given everywhere is as follows: "Four Californian girls on holidays decide to travel south of the border. Mexican marauders capture them in a secluded hut, and the holiday develops in an unpleasant manner for the girls."

Now go to:
Uschi Digard, Part II: 1970, Part I
(1970 was a busy year for her)