R.I.P. – Dick Miller, Part II: 1961-67

25 Dec 1928 – 30 Jan 2019

The American thespian treasure known as Dick Miller, one of our all-time favorite character actors, entered the Great Nothingness on January 30th, 2019.

A Bronx-born Christmas Day present to the world, Miller entered the film biz doing redface back in 1956 in the Roger Corman western Apache Woman (trailer). He quickly became a Corman regular and, as a result, became a favorite face for an inordinate amount of modern and contemporary movie directors, particularly those weaned and teethed in Corman productions. (Miller, for example, appears in every movie Joe Dante has made to date.) 

A working thespian to the end, Miller's last film, the independent horror movie Hanukkah (trailer), starring fellow low culture thespian treasure Sid Haig, just finished production. In it, as in many of Miller's films, his character is named Walter Paisley in homage to his first truly great lead role, that of the loser killer artist/busboy Walter Paisley in Roger Corman's classic black comedy, A Bucket of Blood (1959). 

What follows is a multi-part career review in which we look at the feature films in which he appeared. The films are not necessarily looked at in the order of their release... and if we missed one, let us know.
 

Go here for
R.I.P.: Dick Miller, Part I (1955-60) 

Cabana 54

(1961, director unknown)

A forgotten and probably lost television pilot that never aired and, naturally, never became a series. We couldn't find an image of the pilot online so, instead, we offer (above) one of the most demure centerfold photos to ever appear in Playboy, that of Mara Corda (born Marilyn Joan Watts on 3 Jan 1930), Playboy Playmate of the October 1958 issue and the female lead of such fun films as The Black Scorpion (1957, trailer below), The Giant Claw (1957 / trailer) and the classic Tarantula (1955 / trailer). According to the imdb, she was part of the Cabana 54 cast.

Corda-less trailer to 
The Black Scorpion:

The only documentation of the pilot's existence that we could find (outside the imdb) is in Vincent Terrace's book, Encyclopedia of Unaired Television Pilots, 1945-2018, which offers the following details about the NBC drama, Cabana 54: "The Shelter Island Inn, a nightclub in the harbor district of San Diego, provides the backdrop for a look at the activities of its owner, the undercover police agent who secretly battles crime and corruption (he resides in Cabana 54) Originally titled Cottage 64."

The imdb lets us know that the pilot featured Dick Miller, Richard Garland and (as mentioned) Mara Corday; we assume Garland (7 July 1927 – 24 May 1969), not yet notably ill or alcoholic, was the lead; who knows what character Miller played.

Though the director is not officially known, the producer is: Samuel Gallu (21 March 1918 – 27 March 1991). Seeing that Gallu directed many an episode of his TV productions, as well as an occasional movie — including The Limbo Line (1968), with Kate O'Mara, and Theatre of Death (1967 / trailer) — it seems presumable that he may have directed this pilot as well. Check your attics, folks.

Capture that Capsule

(1961, dir. Will Zens)

Although Dick Miller appeared in a variety of TV shows in the late fifties that had nothing to do with Roger Corman — including, for example, in Dragnet (1951-59) in the episode The Big Perfume Bottle (1958), in which "a unique and costly perfume bottle is taken from an upscale home and it's up to Friday (Jack Webb [2 April 1920 – 23 Dec 1982]) and Smith (Ben Alexander [27 June – 5 July 1969]) to get it back" — he had only ever appeared in Corman movies. In theory, Capture that Capsule is the first non-Corman feature film that Dick Miller is credited as appearing in, as "Richard Miller". (The name is even on the poster!)

But, let's take a look at what Fantastic Movie Musing and Ramblings says: "This is either the single most dunderheaded spy movie ever made, or one of the most slyly subtle comedies to pop up on my list in some time. Yet, despite the wealth of evidence against it, I suspect it's the former. […] And even though the imdb lists Dick Miller in the cast, the movie bills someone named Richard Miller who is a totally different person. [Italics ours] If you like your bad movies funny, this one is recommended."Seeing that the trivia section of the imdb says, "This movie has a two-minute-long car chase sequence that has no dialogue, no music, and only one car in it," we can image it a very bad-funny film.

In any event, Capture that Capsule, aka Spy Squad, despite being on all Credits lists found on line, does not have Dick Miller in it. It is, however, the directorial debut of Will Zens, born Frederick Willard Zens (26 June 1920 – 27 March 2013), who co-wrote the script with his wife, Jan[is] Elblein. As "Arthur Hopkins", Zens also composed the music to Capture that Capsule. At the time of his death, Zens was "survived by two brothers and a sister, Art, Rob and Pat, and by his nine children, daughters Patty McNamee, JoAnne Frohman, and Cathy Riegler; by his six sons, Frederick Willard Jr. (Rick), Bob, Mike, Bill, Steve and Mark; by several sons- and daughters-in-law, by 19 grandchildren, and six great-grandchildren. [Oconnor Mortuary]"

Zens subsequently directed a variety of lame films, including the regional flicks Truckin' Man aka Trucker's Woman (1975 / trailer) and Hot Summer in Barefoot County (1974 / TV spot); later, he produced an occasional flick, like Coach (1978 / trailer) and the disasterpiece that is Charles Nizet's Help Me... I'm Possessed aka Nightmare at Blood Castle (1974).

Oh, yeah, the plot as found in Wesley Alan Britton's book, Onscreen and Undercover: The Ultimate Book of Movie Espionage: "[…] Capture that Capsule stars Dick O'Neill and Pat Bradley in an anti-Red film about Communist spies who are after a space capsule they think contains secrets. But the capsule's secrets are just a ploy to draw the spies into the open." O'Neill plays a Commx-smallie, Pat Bradley doesn't. 

Trailer to

 Spy Squad:

The Dwrayger Dungeon, which notes that "if Dick Miller is in this movie then he sure doesn't look like Dick Miller," also says: "Capture That Capsule is just about as WTF?! as it gets, and should be a cult favourite right up there with Skydivers (1963 / full movie) and Bucket of Blood (1959)! […] I liked it enough that I just might just have to go back and watch it again!"

Available, as the trailer indicates, at Something Weird. 

Atlas

(1961, dir. Roger Corman)

Supposedly, an un-credited Dick Miller mills around somewhere in the movie as a Greek soldier at the side of two other Greek soldiers played by Corman and Griffith. The movie incorporates stock footage from the 1954 Douglas Sirk "historical drama", Sign of the Pagan (trailer).

The what and the why Roger Corman would decide to do a sword and sandal film escapes us, but the tale is that the success of Hercules (1958 / trailer, with Steve "Hubba Hubba" Reeves [21 Jan 1926 – 1 May 2000], also of Ed Wood's Jail Bait [1954], above, not from either film) made him decide to try his luck. Atlas ended up being the only peplum movie he ever made.

Trailer to 
Atlas:

Promised funds from independent Greek filmmaker Vion Papamichelis (Ta kokkina fanaria / Red Lanterns [1963 / music]), Corman went to Greece to make Atlas with a variety of his stock players, including the actor playing title lead, six-foot-three Michael Forest (of The Saga of the Viking Women and Their Voyage to the Waters of the Great Sea Serpent [1957 / trailer] and Beast from Haunted Cave [1959 / trailer]) and Frank Wolff (11 May 1928 – 12 Dec 1971), the actor playing the movie's bad guy, Proximates the Tyrant. As Atlas, he is perhaps a bit leaner than the musclemen usually found in films of this ilk.

Ozus' World Movie Reviews summarily dismisses the film by saying, "[Atlas] features shrill dialogue, wooden acting and a feeling that the classics have been severely compromised. The screenplay and story by Charles Griffith fail on all levels."

Scriptwriter Griffith himself said, "[Atlas] was Naked Paradise (1957, see Part I) again. It was really terrible. I wrote it in a hotel room in Athens with Frank Wolff over my shoulder ridiculing me as I was doing it. He was saying, 'This is so puerile!' [Laughs.] But there was no time to think at all. You had to type. I said, 'I can only do one thing! I can't think and type at the same time, so shut up.' It was really hilarious, the whole picture. […] I think I got $100 bucks for that. [Corman] picked up a girl in Berlin and she* was the script girl, wardrobe and props – all kinds of things. I became associate producer because I was there. He really made this with his own money. I found out we couldn't shoot in the locations we picked, so we had to bribe guards at the gates to let us into all these antiquities. It was hilarious. But it did make its money back. [Senses of Cinema]"

* That, it seems likely, would have been Barbara Comeau Bojonell (25 April 1936 – 4 March 2010).

The plot, from The Ryder: "Atlas stars Michael Forest as the title character, an Olympic wrestler/philosophy student recruited by the evil Praximedes, Tyrant of Seronikos (Frank Wolff), to fight the champion of neighboring kingdom Thenis, which is ruled by wise old Telektos (Andreas Filippides, helping to fill the quota of Green actors in the film). Atlas takes some convincing, though, which is why Praximedes throws his ex-lover, high priestess Candia (Barboura Morris), at him. When the film gets to the battle scenes, they're staged very poorly and edited most chaotically to cover for the shortage of extras. […]"

Scene Stealers points out, "In Greek mythology, Atlas was a primordial being that pre-dated Zeus and his godly brood, and was such a relevant figure within Greek culture that his etymological reverberations can still be felt today (Atlantic Ocean, a road atlas, etc.). In Greek myth, Zeus punished Atlas for his defiance following the war against the Olympians, where Atlas and his fellow Titans lost control of the universe. Although most of the Titans were confined to Tartarus (a sort of Beta version of Hell) after the Olympians took over, Atlas was granted special punishment, and was forced to stand on the western edge of the world and hold Uranus on his shoulders, thereby keeping the universe in balance. The 1961 Roger Corman film, Atlas, […] there's a big dispute about whether the Atlas character in this film, played by Michael Forest, was even the proper Atlas of Greek myth. Corman's film didn't deal with any of the drama surrounding the Titan revolt or Atlas' eventual punishment, and instead told a different story about a city under siege and a Thunderdome-style fight to settle the issue. Thing of it is, even though Michael Forest was a terrible actor, and the low-budget production values were laughable, the Atlas character in this film was an ass-kicking, courageous, well-loved figure who eventually won the day for the good guys."

Frank Wollf, who plays the bad guy of the movie, Praximedes, started his career with bit parts in several Roger Corman films, most notably The Wasp Woman (1959), I Mobster (1959) and Ski Troop Attack (1960 / trailer). He remained in Europe after Atlas and achieved a notable career. Working with directors such as Sergio Leone (Once Upon a Time in the West [1968 / trailer]), Sergio Corbucci (The Great Silence [1968]), Radley Metzger (The Licorice Quartet [1970 / trailer below]), Enzo G. Castellari (Kill Them All and Come Back Alone [1968 / trailer] and Cold Eyes of Fear [1971 / trailer]). Unluckily, he also suffered from depression, so despite his continued success he killed himself in his room at the Hilton Hotel in Rome in December, 1971.

Trailer to Radley Metzger's 
The Licorice Quartet:

The Premature Burial

(1962, dir. Roger Corman)

Dick Miller plays a grave robber named Mole. The movie, the third of a total of eight movies Corman was to direct that were based (or at least inspired) by the public domain works of Edgar Allan Poe (19 Jan 1809 – 7 Oct 1849).

"Poe's original story, published in 1844, is less a straightforward work of fiction and more a catalogue of obsession, its unnamed narrator listing the various incidents in which men and women have been buried alive. As with many of his other Poe adaptations, Corman uses this as the springboard for a gothic shaggy dog story, with [Ray] Milland's Guy Carrell driven to extreme ends to conquer his fear of premature burial. [We Are Cult]"

Trailers from Hell on 
The Premature Burial:

Here, the tale was adapted for the screen by Charles Beaumont (2 Jan 1929 – 21 Feb 1967) and Ray Russell (4 Sept 1924 – 15 March 1999). Ray Russell also wrote William Castle's Mr. Sardonicus. (1961 / trailer), which was based on a short story of his own previously published in Playboy, and also scripted the decidedly underappreciated kiddy black comedy, Terrence Fischer's The Horror of It All (1964 / music number below). The great Charles Beaumont (born Charles Leroy Nutt), one of the most influential scriptwriters of the original Twilight Zone (1959-64), also scripted movies such as The Masque of Red Death (1964) and The Intruder (1962). He died an early and tragic death: "He suffered from a degenerative aging disease which gave him, at age 38, the appearance of a centenarian. It has been speculated that he was suffering simultaneously from Pick's Disease and early-onset Alzheimer's Disease. A busy and prolific writer for most of his adult life, he found it virtually impossible to work in his last three years, although friends sometimes completed work for him without credit. [imdb]" 

Pat Boone sings in

Terrence Fischer's The Horror of It All:

"Probably the least of Roger Corman's cycle of Poe movies, The Premature Burial suffers because of its casting; Corman wanted Vincent Price for the lead — and Price was in all the other seven of the movies in the series — but because of an attempted split from AIP, Price's contract was locked up. So he went with Oscar winner Ray Milland (3 Jan 1907 – 10 March 1986), who had been in Billy Wilder's The Lost Weekend (1945 / trailer), but whose career had not particularly soared. Of course, Milland is not a bad actor... just wrong for the role of Guy Carrell, a 'med student' (in his fifties), who fears falling into a cataleptic state and being buried alive, as he believes his father was. He's married to pretty Emily (Hazel Court [10 Feb 1926 – 15 April 2008] of Devil Girl from Mars [1954 / trailer]), but they don't go on their honeymoon or do much of anything because of his obsession. Instead, he works on an elaborate tomb that's riddled with secret escape routes. Because the story was so short, Corman's movie relies on lots of moody, trippy nightmare sequences as well as a bit of moping. [Combustible Celluloid]"

"The Premature Burial may lack the stylistic visual flare we see in some of the later [Corman Poe] movies (The Masque of the Red Death, its cinematographer a very young Nicholas Roeg, is a particular stand-out), but it remains an engaging gothic melodrama, and after a fairly slow build-up, its last act sees the film become a Grand Guignol revenge tragedy. [We Are Cult]"

 

"After striking gold at American International Pictures with a pair of Vincent Price-starring Poe adaptations, producer-director Roger Corman decided to go independent for his third Poe outing with a new leading man, Ray Milland. […] What resulted here was one of the darkest and most subdued entries in the series, a paranoid character study with a particularly grim twist ending and a haunting visual aesthetic loaded with craggy trees and endless banks of fog. […] This definitely isn't a film for newcomers to the Poe films, who should experience the theatrics of Vincent Price first before diving into this more challenging and austere production. There's quite a bit to savor here including a literate screenplay by Charles Beaumont […] and a terrific music score by Ronald Stein, stepping in for series regular Les Baxter and offering some of the best music in the AIP catalog. However, the show is really stolen here by English-born Court, who was already a horror vet from films like The Man Who Could Cheat Death (1959 / trailer) and The Curse of Frankenstein (1963). She turns on the glamour here and makes for a compelling main character, with demands placed upon her that might have made other actresses balk. [Mondo Digital]"

The Intruder

(1962, dir. Roger Corman)

A.k.a. The Stranger, I Hate Your Guts, and Shame. Multiple sites online list this Corman movie as a project involving Dick Miller. But none say in what manner — and we don't remember seeing him anywhere on screen when saw the movie. But for the benefit of a doubt, we list the movie here as a "maybe". Click on the linked title above to read what we had to say about The Intruder, a true rarity of Corman's oeuvre in that it is full out 100% "message movie"... and lost money when released.

Trailer to 
The Intruder:

The Man with X-Ray Eyes

(1963, dir. Roger Corman)

"If nothing else, X! (which is the actual, on-screen title of the movie) has long stood as a gem in Corman's crown, and with good reason — it proves itself to be a minor masterpiece in terms of low-budget filmmaking, as well as being good science-fiction. [The Bad Movie Report]"

It's one of a wasted life's favorite Corman movies also. Sure it's cheesy and dated at a few points, but it is also engrossing and depressing and ends with one of the most downer scenes ever and with a killer final line of dialogue as icing on the cake. (Perhaps our memory is faulty, but we seriously remember him screaming the legendary final line that everyone, including Corman — contrary to what Nick Garris says in his Trailer from Hell commentary below — says was never filmed.)

As for Dick Miller: blink and you might miss him. Alongside Jonathon Haze, he heckles the great Mentallo.

The poster ain't to shabby, either: "The poster for X: The Man with X-Ray Eyes raises more questions about X than it probably intended. For instance, why is he using his new-found powers to look through women's bodies to their bones? Better yet, why the heck is he checking out that monkey? That's weird even for a Roger Corman movie. (Topless Robot]" Definitely more interesting than the watered-down version used for the Golden Key comic book tie-in.

Trailers from Hell on 

The Man with X-Ray Eyes:

Based on a story by Ray Russell, he wrote the screenplay with Robert Dillon, who went to pen the script a few beach party flicks, including our favorite, Muscle Beach Party (1964 / trailer). Rumor has it that a remake of The Man with X-Ray Eyes is in development hell in Hollywood… perhaps they'll write into a scene the golden oldie from Bauhaus, The Man with X-Ray Eyes?

Bauhaus sings 
The Man with X-Ray Eyes:

At All Movie, Bruce Eder has the plot: "Dr. James Xavier (Ray Milland of Frogs [1972 / trailer]) is a brilliant but unorthodox researcher whose work with human sight has yielded an experimental chemical that may vastly increase the range of what we can see. Despite the misgivings and warnings of the two people closest to him, Dr. Diane Fairfax (Diana Van Der Vlis [9 June 1935 – 22 Oct 2001]) and Dr. Sam Brant (Harold J. Stone [3 March 1913 – 18 Nov 2005] of The Seven Minutes [1971 / trailer] and The Wrong Man [1956 / trailer]), he uses it on himself and finds that he is able to look inside the human body in real-time. This gives him the ability to save the life of a patient in surgery, but in the process, he offends a top physician (John Hoyt [5 Oct 1904 – 15 Sept 1991] of Attack of the Puppet People [1958 / trailer], Two on a Guillotine [1965 / trailer], Curse of the Undead [1959 / trailer] and so much more) and calls his own judgment into question. He won't stop or even slow his experiments, however, and when Sam is accidentally killed trying to stop him, he is forced to flee. Soon he is living the life of a hunted man, and is protected and exploited by Crane (Don Rickles [8 May 1926 – 6 April 2017] of Innocent Blood [1992 / trailer]), a larcenous carny-man who sets him up as a 'healer' on skid row, taking peoples' pennies while Xavier makes his diagnoses. After getting away from Crane, Xavier is found by Diane, who joins him on the run, and by now his own worst nature is coming to the surface. They head to Las Vegas, where his ability to see through objects allows him to win at most of the games in front of him, but he is discovered because of the attention that his 'streak' draws to him. Pursued out of town, he heads out to the desert, and by now his ability to see transcends the boundaries of earthly space, leading him to a terrible quandary and a hideous solution to his plight, inspired by an encounter with a preacher."

"In probably the only light-hearted sequence in the entire film, Dr. Xavier and Diane attend a groovy 60s party and after a cute girl asks Dr Xavier to dance we get a funny sequence where we see that he can see through everyone's clothes as they dance. […] Ray Milland brings so much intensity to his role as James Xavier and it's really one of his best performances. The direction by Roger Corman is so sharply executed. He is continuously finding new imaginative ways to move the camera and add FX shots to keep the viewer engrossed in the story going on. This film was made in 1963 on a very low budget without any of today's modern CGI and it still stands up extremely well. [Grindhouse Cinema Database]"

The Man with the X-Ray Eyes, oddly enough, was originally released as a double feature with one of the truly fun and stylish cheap B&W semi-classic horrors produced by Corman, Francis Ford Coppola's (now public domain) Dementia 13 (1963), starring William Campbell. Dementia 13 was rather pointlessly remade in 2017 as a body counter with too many subplots, but while hardly as fun as the original it works well enough in its own digitally sterile, way (trailer).

The original Dementia 13,

in full:

The Terror
(1963, multiple directors)

The current list of folks who did some directing on this classic bad flick includes Roger Corman, Francis Ford Coppola, Jack Hale, Monte Hellman, Jack Hill, Dennis Jakob and Jack Nicholson — it would not be surprising if more names were eventually added to the list. Dick Miller has a main role, and was later — we're talking decades here – even brought back by Corman to shoot some new bracketing scenes to establish an overseas copyright; in doing so, the main narrative becomes an extended flashback.

Click on the linked title above or here to go to our review of a public domain movie that we don't actually find all that good, but for some reason is always fondly remembered…

Trailers from Hell on

The Terror:

Beach Ball

(1965, dir. Lennie Weinrib)

When ignoring all the television productions Dick Miller had already taken part in, and keeping in mind that the "Richard Miller" found in Will Zens' laughable no-budget anti-commie trash disasterpiece Capture that Capsule is not the Dick Miller, then this movie here must be credited as the first feature film NOT directed by Roger Corman to have Dick Miller in the cast. Miller plays the important role of "Cop #1" in this beach party flick produced by Gene "I'm Roger's Brother" Corman and distributed by Paramount Pictures.

"The running gag [in Beach Ball] involving Mr. Wolf (James Wellman ) is that he keeps getting caught up in all the fun fun fun, or else is dosed with nitrous oxide, and always ends up in some mildly compromising position in the morning, being frowned at by cops! The cops in this case are one guy I didn't recognize, and the great Dick Miller! Ha ha, he's as terrific as ever here, taking it smooth and easy and grinning as if stoned! [Ha ha, it's Burl!]" 

Trailer to

Beach Ball:

Beach Ball was directed by Lennie Weinrib (April 29, 1935 – June 28, 2006), a man better known as a voice actor, though he can be found physically acting in Tales of Terror (1962 / trailer) and Good Times (1966). Beach Ball is one of the three directorial projects, all beach party films, that Weinrib ever directed; the other two being Wild Wild Winter [1966, see further below] and Out of Sight [1966 / trailer].

The musical acts appearing in Beach Ball are The Supremes, The Four Seasons, The Rightous Brothers, The Hondells and The Walker Brothers…. and a band that only exists to drive the plot of the movie, The Wigglers! 

From the movie:

The Supremes do Surfer Boy:

Also: "The film is of no small interest to sixties custom car fans. It features an exceptionally rare appearance by the famous Silhouette, completed in 1963 by legendary builder Bill Cushenbery. The bubble-domed car was stolen in Bakersfield, California in 1983 and has never been found. [imdb]"

The plot: "To obtain the money, Dick (Edd Byrnes of Reform School Girls [1957 / trailer] and Mankillers [1987 / scene from a Russian VHS]) tells Susan (Chris Noel), the beautiful but bookish credit union manager of the college they attend, that he needs a sum to continue his research in African tribal rhythms. In fact, he and The Wigglers have dropped out of school and are enjoying life among the surfers and hot rodders at Malibu. Susan and college finance committee members Deborah (Gail Gilmore aka Gail Gerber [4 Oct 1937 – 2 March 2014] of Village of the Giants [1965 / trailer]), Augusta (Mikki Jamison [13 Nov 1942 – 10 June 2013]*) and Samantha (Brenda Benet [14 Aug 1945 – 7 April 1982]*) uncover the scam and tear up the cheque, but The Wigglers play a Long Beach (California) custom-car show in drag and win first prize. Meanwhile, Susan and her girlfriends decide to make it their mission to bring The Wigglers back to the halls of academia, so they shed their conservative look and pose as free-spirited beach chicks. Of course, The Wigglers instantly fall for them. [Nostalgia Central]"

* Tragic death notations: Retired actress cum real estate agent Mikki Jamison died on 10 June 2013 around 4:00 p.m. in I-da-ho' when the car she was driving crossed over to the other side of the center line and ran head-on into an on-coming pickup truck. Brenda Benet, depressed due to personal tragedies, shot herself in the head in her bathroom on 7 April 1982.

From the movie: Dick Miller…

and then The Supremes doing

 Beach Ball:

In his book Hollywood Surf and Beach Movies: The First Wave, 1959–1969, amidst the ten pages he gives the movie, author Thomas Lisanti writes: "Despite the drubbing it got from the critics and some beach movie fans, Beach Party is arguably the breeziest and most enjoyable of the Beach Party [1963 / trailer] clones. It is also the most blatant ripoff, throwing in everything from surfing, sky diving and hot rodding to a battle-of-the-bands contest and the guys in drag to match the zaniness of the AIP beach movies. […] As for the cast, unlike Annette Funicello [22 Oct 1942 – 8 April 2013] in the Beach Party movies or Noreen Corcoran [20 Oct 1943 – 15 Jan 2016] in The Girls on the Beach [1965 / see further below], perky Chris Noel [photo below not from the film] and the other girls are not afraid to show off their shapely figures in very revealing bikinis. Pretty blonde Anna Lavelle in particular dons the skimpiest swimsuits and has some funny moments as the guys' addled-brained beach groupie Polly. The movie boasts perhaps the most curvaceous set of lead actresses in any surf movie from the decade. For boy watchers, the guys sport nice physiques, particularly handsome Robert Logan and blonde Aron Kincaid [15 June 1940 – 6 Jan 2011 of Creature of Destruction (1967 / full movie)], who gives a droll performance as ladies' man Jack. Edd Byrnes is definitely too long in the tooth to make a believable collage guy but he does look good in his swim trunks."

Two years later, the pulchritudinous Chris Noel was in the unjustly forgotten motorcycle exploiter The Glory Stompers (1967), an over-the-top piece of flotsam that needs rediscovery. 

Trailer to

The Glory Stompers:

Classic Film is less enamored by the movie, saying: "The best thing about Beach Ball is that the plot doesn't get in the way of the music. Plus, it's fun watching Byrnes trying to act super cool. When a girl asks him to leave the dance floor so they can chat, he quips: 'Don't bug me, baby. I'm in orbit.'"

Ski Party

(1965, dir. Alan Rafkin)

Dick Miller, uncredited, appears as a taxi driver in yet another movie produced by Gene "I'm Roger's Brother" Corman, this time for A.I.P.

Basically: beach blanket bingo goes ski log bingo in this toothless but stupidly entertaining "teen" riff of Some Like It Hot (1959 / trailer), but without gangsters. (By the end of the movie, logically enough, everyone is back at the beach.) Within the timeline of the nine A.I.P. beach party movies, some see it this one as the fifth, but seeing that neither Frankie Avalon nor Annette Funicello play their regular characters of that series, Ski Party is more of a one-off A.I.P "ski bingo" flick aimed at the same audience.

Trailer to

Ski Party:

Ski Party is the first official feature film screenwriter credit for Robert Kaufman (22 March 1931 – 21 Nov 1991), who later wrote Freebie and the Bean (1974 / trailer) and The Happy Hooker Goes to Washington (1977 / trailer). Director Alan Rafkin (23 July 1928 – 6 Aug 2001) is remembered today as one of the most prolific sitcom directors of all time; somehow, he also found the time do an occasional inconsequential movie like this one. The mandatory music acts of the movie are The Hondells, Lesley Gore (2 May 1946 – 16 Feb 2015), and the great James Brown (3 May 1933 – 25 Dec 2006) & The Famous Flames, but others of the cast sing songs, too.

In Ski Party, Leslie Gore actually sang a fluffy little song entitled Sunshine, Lollipops and Rainbows, but we prefer to present a different song of hers. 

Leslie Gore singing

You Don't Own Me:

In the book Bikini, Surfing & Beach Party Movies, Terry Rowan offers the following detailed but at times extremely grammatically questionable plot description: "Todd Armstrong (Frankie Avalon) and Craig Gamble (Dwayne Hickman) are California college undergraduates who unsuccessfully date pretty co-eds Linda Hughes (Deborah Walley [12 Aug 1941 – 10 May 2001], of The Ghost in the Invisible Bikini [1966 / trailer], The Bubble [1966/ trailer] and The Severed Arm [1973 / trailer]) and Barbara Norris (Yvonne "Batgirl" Craig [16 May 1937 – 17 Aug 2015]). The arrogant, athletic classmate Freddie (Aron Kincaid), who has no problems in getting a girl and as president of the Ski Club, organizes a midterm vacation trip to ski country […]. Although they know nothing about skiing, Todd and Craig follow on the trip to learn the secret of Freddie's technique. Once at the lodge, they pose as frumpy, non-threatening young English gals, Jane and Nora who have terrible accents. When not interrupted by a mysterious ice-skating, yodeling polar bear, or toying with psychologically-imbalanced and lederhosen-clad lodge manager Mr. Pevney (Robert Q. Lewis [25 April 1920 – 11 Dec 1991], also seen somewhere in Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex* But Were Afraid to Ask [1972 / trailer]), they observe the girls in their group up close, to learn how to succeed with women, and figure out how they have gone wrong. The gorgeous curvy Swedish ski instructor Nita (Bobbie Shaw Chance of The Devil and Leroy Bassett [1973 / full film]) gets in the mix of things with Todd. Somehow, after all this fun, they end up back at Todd's parent's beachfront house, happily together again."

Over at All Movie, Hal Erickson comments: "Ski Party is essentially a beach-party flick with snow and capri pants replacing the surf and bikinis. […] And boy, are Avalon and Hickman a sight in lipstick and high heels. Avalon's usual vis-a-vis Annette Funicello has a mere guest role here [as the boys' desirable but modestly dressed biology tutor, Professor Sonya Roberts], allowing Deborah Walley and Yvonne Craig (below) to supply the pulchritude. All that's really missing are the usual Beach Party guest stars: Robert Q. Lewis is hardly a fair exchange for Buster Keaton (4 Oct 1895 – 1 Feb 1966) and Don Rickles."

Oddly enough, when Frankie Avalon and Dwayne Hickman teamed up again later that same year for Dr Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine (1965 / trailer), they switched their character names: Frankie became "Craig Gamble" and Dwayne became "Todd Armstrong".

One might think, "amazingly enough, Dell Comics published a comic book adaptation of the movie", but Dell published a lot of odd one-shot film tie-ins back in the sixties. What is amazing, though, is the terrible way Avalon's head is glued to the body in the cover composite.

Filmed mostly at Sun Valley, in the state of I da ho' 2 show U a good time.

The Girls on the Beach

(1965, dir. William N. Witney)

Over at Ha ha, it's Burt!, Burt says with a belly laugh: "Dick Miller, who sure does appear in a lot of the movies I review, ha ha, plays a character with an inexplicable hate for the Beatles! 'I wish they'd go back to where they came from,' he grouses! 'England?' asks Leo, but Dick shouts 'No, under a rock!' But too bad Dick, because everyone else in the movie loves those boys from Liverpool, and that love figures prominently in the plot, or at least in what this picture offers up in place of a plot, ha ha!" Dick, by the way, despite his lines, is un-credited as the First Waiter. Ditto the case with the Second Waiter, which was played by Leo Gordon (2 Dec 1922 – 26 Dec 2000), who years previously scripted a little film known as Attack of the Giant Leeches (1959). 

Trailer to

The Girls on the Beach:

Scriptwriter Sam Locke (17 Jan 1917 – 18 Sept 1998), credited as "David Malcolm", is the same Sam that wrote that other Paramount released beach-blanket-bingo clone, Beach Ball (1965), but this time the guy who shouted through the director's megaphone was altmeister William N. Witney (15 May 1915 – 17 March 2002). According to Wikipedia, "Quentin Tarantino has singled out Witney as one of his favorite directors and a 'lost master'." Some of his less fluffy projects include I Escaped from Devil's Island (1973 / trailer), The Cat Burglar (1961 / full film), The Bonnie Parker Story (1958 / full film), The Cool and the Crazy (1958 / trailer) and A Strange Adventure (1956 / trailer).

"A sorority house is on the brink of financial ruin because the house mother spent all of their mortgage payment on helping underprivileged people. Now the sorority has to earn $10,000 in a week and can't stoop to any Cinemax levels of skeeziness to earn it – though the film gives it the ol' college try. While a plot does actually exist (no doubt about that), there's a lot more effort put into capturing the majesty of woman's rear ends than I've seen in perhaps any other movie that doesn't explicitly mention 'anal' in the title. [The Retro Set]"

The plot description above fails to mention that The Girls on the Beach is unique in that it is perhaps the only film revolving around The Beatles in which The Beatles never appear. Basically: The guys tell the gals they know The Beatles and the gals organize a fundraiser with The Beatles as the headlining act. But while the Fab Four doesn't show up in the movie, The Beach Boys do. The Girls on the Beach also has the mandatory cross-dressing scene in which the three lead young men dress up as gals to sneak out of the sorority.

In his book Hollywood Surf and Beach Movies: The First Wave, 1959-1969, Thomas Lisanti gushes: "as expected from the title, there are a lot of girls on the beach. A wisecracking little blonde named Gail Gerber [a.k.a. Gail Gilmore, 4 Oct 1937 – 2 May 2014] stands out as the ditzy, man-hungry Georgia. Gail is a knockout in her skimpy swimsuit but has stiff competition from Natalie's younger, sexier sister Lana Wood [seen above, not from the film, and later found in Satan's Mistress (1982 / opening) & Renovation (2010 / trailer)] as the girl in the gold lame bikini and Anna Capri [6 July 1944 – 19 Aug 2010, of William Gibson's Piranha Piranha (1972 / trailer), The Brotherhood of Satan (1971 / trailer) and Enter the Dragon (1973 / trailer, with Jim Kelly)] as the curvaceous, busty Arlene. The female lead, Noreen Corcoran [2 Oct 1943 – 15 Jan 2016], is cute with dyed blonde hair, but she comes across as stilted and uncomfortable clad in some of the ugliest swimsuits ever to appear on the California coast. Linda Marshall as Cynthia spends most of the movie ridiculously draped in a towel that she carries around with her. She's the female Linus Van Pelt of the beach set. As the trio of lothario surfers, hunky Martin West [of Assault on Precinct 13 (1976 / trailer) and Hellhole (1985/ trailer)] is fine as the leader, handsome blonde Aron Kincaid shows comedic promise, and pretty boy Steve Rogers [of Angels from Hell (1968 / trailer)] with his striking dark features and penetrating crystal blue eyes has a disarming charm about him. It's a pity that the guys aren't shirtless more often."

 

Best song of the movie?

Appropriately enough — Not! — Paramount sent The Girls on the Beach out as part of a double bill with the western, Young Fury (1965 / full movie).

The Wild Angels

(1966, dir. Roger Corman)

Groovy poster. "Another Peter Fonda flick, 1966's Wild Angels also starred Nancy Sinatra and became Corman's first entry into the then-popular genre of motorcycle gang movies. The resulting poster looks like it should be the cover to the most epic biker gang comic book of all time. [Topless Robot]" Personally, here at a wasted life, we prefer the Italo version found a bitter further below.

Trailers from Hell on

The Wild Angels:

Some claim that Corman started the 60s' motorcycle flick craze, but if anything he simply made the most influential one. Ignoring Kenneth Anger's experimental short Scorpio Rising (1963 / film) for being a short, and the British flick The Leather Boys (1964 / trailer) for being more kitchen sink realism than motorcycle, there's still the Russ Meyer roughie Motorcycho (1965 / opening credits, with Haji) with its mini-motorbike gang. That said, The Wild Angels is arguably the first motorcycle "classic" made after The Wild One (1953 / trailer), although we personally think that Born Losers (1967 / trailer) is the better movie (it's only flaw being that Billy Jack doesn't die).

The story has it that in 1966 Corman saw a photo of the Hell's Angels in a copy if Life magazine and decided to make a motorcycle flick, once again getting Charles B. Griffith to do the screenplay. Unsatisfied with what Griffith turned in, Corman had Peter Bogdanovich do a rewrte. Griffith later said, "Everybody who worked on it threw things in of their own choosing, including Peter Bogdanovich and Peter Fonda, who had thrown in a lot of the psychedelic stuff that was later cut back. Fonda also changed his name to Heavenly Blues.* It was a mess. […] The Dick Miller scene at the oil well, for instance — which was supposed to be played by Fonda, when George Chakiris* was in the lead — Roger moved everybody up one role when he wouldn't ride the motorcycle. Dick was given dialogue. In my version, the guys come up the tower and Miller's character [Rigger] sees their uniforms and says, 'You guys Hells' Angels?', and Loser [Bruce Dern] pulls up his shirtsleeves to a close-up on a tattoo. And that was the end of the scene. But no, Dick had to go into this speech about Anzio. I don't know if Dick wrote that; maybe it was Barboura Morris or Bogdanovich. Anyway, it was a whole long bullshit scene. I told Roger to 'Take my name off of it before you make the titles', but he told me he already had! And he was enraged with me for wanting to. [Senses of Cinema]"

* "George Chakiris was originally hired by Roger Corman to play 'Black Jack' (later changed to 'Heavenly Blues' by Peter Fonda), but insisted that a stunt double do his motorcycle riding, so Corman replaced him with Fonda, who was originally cast as 'Loser'. [imdb]"

In any event, at AV Club Corman says his intentions with The Wild Angels were as follows: "To really do this right, it can't be like The Wild One, which is the town's reaction to these bad guys. It's got to be from the story of the bad guys, and they can't be 100 percent bad, because nobody is 100 percent bad,* at least nobody short of extreme psychosis. So I didn't want to portray them sympathetically. It was a job simply of honestly portraying the Hells Angels and their position in society. I saw them as the beginning of the rebelliousness of the 1960s. The hippies came a little bit later, and the movement into the streets from the college kids, but it really started, I think, with the working-class kids who didn't fit into high society, and knew it."

* Yep, remember: even men who rape women are not 100% bad… Say what? Oh, wait — let's let Cult Movies try to clarify this: "[The Wild Angels] is a remarkably hard-hitting film. There are several rapes, a church gets trashed during a funeral service, a preacher is beaten up, and there's plenty of other incidental violence. Not all the violence is committed by the bikers either — the police are shown as being disturbingly willing to gun down people who are unarmed. The movie doesn't flinch from examining the belief systems that motivate Blues and his pals — they not only wear the symbols of fascism, such as swastikas, they live out a fascist fantasy of power, violence and nihilism. But at the same time the movie doesn't merely demonise them. They have a dream of freedom, and their behaviour is a weird mix of loyalty and viciousness, of idealism and selfishness. When Blues is asked what he believes in, and can come up with nothing better than vague mumblings about freedom and the right to get loaded, we can see his awareness of his own tragedy, that he knows the emptiness of his own rhetoric. His alienation is complete, and it's real. He isn't evil — he simply doesn't have enough awareness to be evil." Long live the patriarchy...

The plot: "Peter Fonda stars as 'Blues', the leader of a San Pedro chapter of bikers. As the movie starts, they ride to the desert to find a stolen bike belonging to 'Loser' (Bruce Dern). There's a fight, the cops arrive, and the Angels try to escape, but Loser is caught by the police, shot, and goes to the hospital. The Angels try to break him out, but he dies. They take Loser's body to his hometown and attempt to have a church funeral for him, but it quickly degenerates into a violent 'orgy.' […] The movie ends as the Angels stage a funeral procession and bring the body to the graveyard; the locals begin attacking the Angels, and Blues makes a final stand. Nancy Sinatra was cast as Fonda's girl, though she really doesn't have much to do. Diane Ladd plays Dern's lover [Gayish], as she was in real life (their daughter, Laura Dern, was probably conceived around this time). [Combustible Celluloid]" Is this the right place to mention that in the film, during Loser's funeral, two not "100% bad" Angels drug and rape Loser's widowed lover, Gayish?

At All Movie Mark Deming pontificates: "Roger Corman didn't invent the biker movie […], but, with The Wild Angels, he gave it a new lease on life. Peter Fonda and Nancy Sinatra stand out like sore thumbs among the real-life Hell's Angels hired to give the film its grubby atmosphere, but Fonda's studied cool nicely contrasts with the aggressive surliness of the rest of the male cast — and enough rock bands have sampled Fonda's 'We wanna be free to ride our bikes and not get hassled by the man!' speech to turn it into a classic moment in sleaze-movie history. The film's beer-swilling, pot-smoking, and unfocused brawling may have become screen clichés in record time, but they were newer and more shocking in 1966, and the film's rough, unpolished visual style gives it a ring of truth missing from most of the films that followed in its wake. Add Davie Allen and the Arrows's classic theme song, which sent a generation of garage rockers scurrying for fuzz boxes, and you get perhaps the definitive 1960s biker flick." 

Davie Allan & the Arrows —

 Blues' Theme (1967):

Wild Wild Winter

(1966, dir. Lennie Weinrib)

After Beach Ball (1965, see further above), the second (and last) Sam Locke-written, Lennie Weinrib-directed flick to feature Dick Miller in a small part, this time some guy named Rilk. Other cast returnees from Beach Ball are Chris Noel (named Susan in both films), Don Edmonds and James Wellman.

Like Alan Rafkin's Ski Party (1965, see above), this is a beach blanket bingo flick on the ski slopes... the last of a total of four (non-related) ski-bingo flicks that includes the previously mentioned Ski Party and Get Yourself a College Girl (1964 / trailer)  and Winter A-Go-Go (1965 / trailer). As fitting for a final and weak effort, the music to Wild Wild Winter is mostly toothless and forgettable, even for the genre. 

The Astronauts in Wild Wild Winter

doing A Change of Heart:

Wild Wild Winter seems never to have gotten either a VHS or DVD release, and is thus so obscure that at the moment (25.02.2019) it doesn't even have one External Review listed at the imdb, though it does have two User Reviews, one which, by KHawley-2, says: "I'm pretty confident this wasn't an Oscar contender in it's [sic] day, but it was actually kind of funny in a retro sort of way. College students? Most of the guys in this movie look old enough to be parents of college students. Sit back, don't expect too much, and stay tuned for the bear at the end of the movie."

Luckily, however, there are books out there about movies like this one, including Tom Lisanti's Drive-in Dream Girls: A Galaxy of B-Movie Starlets of the Sixties, which says: "[Suzie] Kaye (2 Sept 1941 – 5 March 2008) gives a sprightly performance (Variety called her 'a cutie') as Sandy, a coed and member of a sorority headed by the prim Susan (Chris Noel, seen above not from this film), who instructs her Zeta-Theta sisters to distrust men because all they want is a 'hi and a goodbye.'* Long-in-the-tooth Gary Clarke ('He looks like our father,' laughs Suzie) was cast as Lonnie, a surfer bum and ladies man who is coaxed to leave the shores of Malibu to attend Alpine University by his friends Burt (Don Edmonds [1 Sept 1937 – 30 May 2009]) and Perry (Steve Rogers). The plan is for Lonnie to romance and distract Susan so they could move in on her friends. Sandy and Dot (Vicky Albright). Of course, Susan eventually uncovers Lonnie's ruse and he is forced to participate in a championship ski contest against her snobbish boyfriend John (Steve Franken [27 May 1932 – 24 Aug 2012]). Lonnie wins the competition by fluke and gains the love of Susan."

* Actually, between the two most men also want to get laid, or at least get a blowjob… though some are satisfied with a simple handjob. 

Dick and Dee Dee in Wild Wild Winter

doing Heartbeats:

Gary Clarke was once married to Babe of Yesteryear Pat Woodell (12 July 1944 – 19 Sept 2015), with whom he appears in Class of '74 (1972 / trailer). Chris Noel survived The Glory Stompers (1967 / trailer further above somewhere) and Vietnam to do The Tormentors (1971 / trailer), but the true name of note of the cast — other than Dick Miller, that is — is of course Don Edmonds, still in his "teen film actor" days. Today, his name is fondly remembered as that of a director and producer of numerous socially un-redeeming trash classics. His first directorial effort was Wild Honey (1972, with the great Uschi Digard), but the films that made his name are of course the two Dyanne Thorne anti-classics Ilsa: She Wolf of the SS (1975 / trailer) and Ilsa, Harem Keeper of the Oil Sheiks (1976 / trailer, with Haji). Here's an interview with the man... If you don't know his trash, you should.

The Trip

(1967, dir. Roger Corman)

 

Look at that great Italian poster! "For some reason, the American version of the poster for the LSD-fueled Peter Fonda movie The Trip was presented in mostly black and white. Luckily, the Italians know how to fix things and added some psychedelic color to the mix as well as an image of Fonda either super high or… being serviced. Or maybe both! Probably both. [Topless Robot]" The Danish poster below ain't too shabby, either.

Dick Miller, in any event, fills in the scenery briefly as a bartender named Cash in yet another Roger Corman movie, this one written by no one less than Jack Nicholson.

Personally, we here at a wasted life tend to agree with kakkarot at the imdb, who way back on 27 November 2000 wrote: "[…] Overall, this is an entertaining little time capsule filled with twists and old film techniques. But I still cannot stress enough the arrogance of a man who tries to capture an LSD trip on camera for the silver screen. Even though the film did do moderately well at the box-office (for 1967, that is), mind-expansion enthusiasts, like myself, might find the LSD depictions to be a bit funny at times, and the dialogue to be typical for a film of its kind. […]" That said, we here at a wasted life also must mention we prefer mushrooms to acid, any day.

Trailers from Hell offer some trivia: "Writer Jack Nicholson and star Peter Fonda told Roger Corman he couldn't make a movie about LSD without trying it at least once. So Roger took a caravan of pals to Big Sur, where he dutifully dropped acid and communed with the elements. Out of it all came his most personal and revealing film, a pop art time capsule that was banned in Britain for nearly a decade."* And of course… 

The Trailer to

The Trip:

* About his experience, RC says at AV Club: "I had nothing but a wonderful experience. I went up to Big Sur — I remember Timothy Leary saying 'Go someplace beautiful with people you know and try to drop the acid,' as we used to say 'in such a setting' — so I went up to Big Sur, and I was the straightest guy in a fairly wild crowd, so when people heard I was taking it, so many other people evidently felt that 'If Rog can do this, it's okay. We'll try it, too.' We had a caravan of cars going up to Big Sur, and we actually had to work out a schedule as to who would be under the influence of acid while one person would be watching them, who would be the straight person to make sure that nothing went wrong. We actually worked out the equivalent of a production schedule."

Pop Matters has the non-existent plot: "The story has Peter Fonda as Paul, a self-centered commercial director in the midst of a divorce from Sally (Susan Strasberg [22 May 1938 – 21 Jan 1999]). He's decided to take an LSD trip to find out something about himself. He scores some hits from Max (Dennis Hopper [17 May 1936 – 29 May 2010], of Red Rock West [1993]) and with John (creepy Bruce Dern, of The Glass House [2001]) as his guide, prepares to 'flow to the center of everything'." While tripping, Paul flees from the creepy John when John goes to get some juice. He then wanders around LA; this is when he runs into various Corman regulars like Miller, Barboura Morris and Luana Anders (12 May 1938 – 21 July 1996).

"Things improve during the second half […]. During this time Paul escapes from the home he is in and goes out onto the city streets. The editing and effects here are impressive and ahead of its time. Some of the visits he has with the people he meets prove interesting including an offbeat conversation that he has with a lady that he meets inside a Laundromat (Barboura Morris) as well as one he has with a very young girl inside her house. […] Fonda's performance was pretty good and this may be one of the best roles of his career. Strasberg who receives second billing appears just briefly and has very few speaking lines. Dern is always fun when he is playing eccentric or intense characters, but here where he is playing a relatively normal one he is boring. […] I was expecting some sort of tragic or profound-like ending […]. However, nothing really happens. The movie just kind of stops and that is it. The weak conclusion hurts what is already a so-so film making it like the drug itself an interesting experiment, but nothing more. [Scopophilia]"

"The band in the club near the beginning is the International Submarine Band, featuring Gram Parsons (5 Nov 1946 – 19 Sept 1973) on vocals. However, their early country-rock sounds were removed and the psychedelic sounds of The Electric Flag were dubbed into the film." Most people who see the film seem to find Electric Flag's music a drag, ala Acidemic, which grumbles "Who wants to begin to crash after a wild night like that while forced to endure stock recording kazoo-driven dixieland jazz? Coming from the oddly named 'American Music Band' [aka The Electric Flag] some tracks sound like Corman fished them out of the trash at a high school pep rally, the sort of thing Otto Preminger might put in Skiddoo (1968 / trailer), the kind of stuff Kevin Spacey might play to torture prisoners in The Men Who Stare at Goats (2009 / trailer). I love Louis Armstrong and Memphis Jug Band as much as the next stoner, don't get me wrong, but not when the same style is generic and tone deaf to the moment. My guess is Corman grabbed it from a royalty-free sound library where it was used as the score for Harold Loyd silents that used to be on TV with 'BOinggg!'-style sound effects added. It was probably the last track on the record and he just forgot to turn it off."

The key member of The Electric Flag was the talented Michael Bloomfield (28 July 1943 – 15 Feb 1981) who, prior to ending his heroin-addicted life as an uncredited composer of porn-flick soundtracks — for example, for the Mitchell Brothers shorts Hot Nazis (1973), Rampaging Dental Assistants (1973) and Marzoff and Day (1974) and the weirdness that is their feature film, Sodom and Gomorrah: The Last Seven Day (1975 / full NSFW movie) — and being found dead locked in his Mercedes, took part in the superlative Super Session with Al Kooper. Oddly enough, he doesn't play guitar on the album's best song. 

Season of the Witch,

from Super Session:

Oh, by the way: "AIP honchos Sam Arkoff and James Nicholson tacked on that opening disclaimer, as well as superimposing a 'cracked glass' effect over Fonda's face in the film's final shot, implying he'd been permanently damaged by the experience. This pissed Corman off, and after they later butchered his 1969 satire GAS-S-S-S! (trailer), he struck out on his own and formed New World Pictures, where he and others could enjoy artistic freedom (on a low-budget, of course). [Cracked Rear Viewer]"

A Time for Killing

(1967, dir. Phil Karlson & Roger Corman)

Roger Corman tried to go "mainstream" with the majors, and after a lot of back and forth he had a three-film deal with Columbia and the approval to do this western based on the novel The Southern Blade by Nelson and Shirley Wolford, to be filmed as The Long Ride Home, the title under which it was released in the UK.

 

Filming started in June 1966 in one of the most beautiful counties of the US, Kane County, Utah, and by the end of the month Corman rode off into the sunset to return to the freedom of being an independent filmmaker and the eternally underappreciated Phil Karlson (2 July 1908 – 12 Dec 1985) was pulled in to finish the movie. Karlson is probably best remembered, if at all, as the director of the mainstream trash Walking Tall (1973 / trailer) and Ben (1972 / trailer), but his true forte was B&W film noirs like Kansas City Confidential (1952) or 99 River Street (1953 / trailer) or Phenix City Story (1955 / scene).

Michael "I Like Kids" Jackson sings

 Ben, a love song to a rat:

Trivia: Harrison Ford has his first credited film role in this movie, listed as "Harrison J. Ford" At that point in time, he needed the middle initial to legally differentiate himself from the long-since forgotten silent film actor, Harrison Ford (16 March 1884 – 2 Dec 1957). Dick Miller as appears as someone named Zollicoffer — the photo below is him in character.

A Time for Killing was not a hit and has unjustly remained a relatively obscure flick. At Ozus' World Movie Reviews, Dennis Schwartz has the plot: "Nearing the end of the bloody Civil War, after four years, Confederate prisoners led by Captain Bentley (George Hamilton) escape from Fort Hawkes, Utah. On the run, heading for the Mexican border, the deceitful Bentley, vowing that the war will never end for him, ambushes a detail of Union soldiers and take as hostage the attractive Emily Biddle (Inger Stevens [18 Oct 1934 – 30 April 1970]* of Hang 'em High [1968 / trailer]), a missionary engaged to the fort's second-in-command, Maj. Tom Wolcott (Glenn Ford [1 May 1916 – 30 Aug 2006]). The obstinate Col. Harries (Emile Meyer [18 Aug 1910 – 19 March 1987]) orders the reluctant Wolcott to take a detail and go after the Rebs, even as Wolcott reasons with his commander that the war is almost over and even if the Rebs are caught they'll soon be released. The Rebs hole up in a Mexican bordello in the Arizona badlands, near the Mexican border. Instead of escaping or returning home, madman Bentley waits for the Union soldiers to catch up and has his sadist sergeant, Luther Liskell (Max Baer of Macon County Line [1974 / trailer]), kill the Union dispatch rider carrying the news that the war is over. It results in the lives of soldiers on both sides killed unnecessarily and of the Major illegally crossing the border into Mexico to defend the honor of his missionary girlfriend who was raped and beaten by Bentley."

* For whatever reasons, Inger Stevens killed herself. Unrelated to that fact, in 1961 in TJ, she secretly married Ike Jones (23 Dec 1929 – 5 Oct 2014), "the first African American to graduate from UCLA's School of Theatre, Film, and Television". That was a good six years before interracial marriage was ruled legal by the Supreme Court in 1967. They kept the marriage secret so as not to ruin her career.

  

Trailer to

A Time for Killing:

"[A Time for Killing] a pretty violent movie, that's for sure, with lots of popguns firing wildly! It's no The Wild Bunch (1969 / trailer), but there's still plenty of tomato paste! In the middle of all that, and amidst the brooding, the rape, the thirst for revenge, sits a pair of comic performances from [Dick] Miller and [Kay E.] Kuter! Ha ha, they're pretty funny guys, and it's a welcome sight whenever these two scalawags appear on the screen! [Ha ha, it's Burl!]"

Not everyone agrees with Burl, however. Mondo 70, for example, seethes: "[Roger Corman's] frequent stooge Dick Miller stuck around in an annoying comic-relief role as a cowardly Union soldier that may have been part of the original conception. If anything, Brown must have wanted more of Miller; there are blatant studio pick-up shots of him and his comedy partner that muck up the pacing that Karlson was supposed to improve. Their pathetic comedy seems increasingly out-of-place as the story turns darker and darker. Meanwhile, the best-known comic performer in the cast, Max Baer Jr. of The Beverly Hillbillies (1962-71), turns in a once-in-a-lifetime turn as an unhinged Reb, one of a band breaking out of a western prison camp days before the end of the Civil War. This psycho loves fighting and killing for their own sakes, and is almost as likely to pick fights with or kill his own comrades as he is to fight the pursuing Union troops led by star Glenn Ford. Baer is skyrocketing over the top, and yet he's topped by his character's commander, a Confederate officer played by George Hamilton in a once-in-a-lifetime channeling of pure evil. […] Also in the eclectic cast are (Harry) Dean Stanton as one of the more reasonable Rebs and Timothy Carey as an arrogant Union sharpshooter."

Go here for some non-embeddable behind the scenes film footage of Dick Miller, Timothy Carey, Roger Corman and others on set at A Time for Killing.

The St Valentine's Day Massacre

(1967, dir. Roger Corman)

Dick Miller makes an uncredited but not completely blink-and-you-miss-him appearance in a less than total blink-and-you-miss-him part as "Gangster Dressed as a Cop", image below, one of the triggermen at the famous Chicago gangland hit that gives this film its title.

The hit of seven members of George "Bugs" Moran's Northside Gang on 14 February 1929, so famously copied in the opening of Billy Wilder's Some Like It Hot (1959 / trailer), is believed to have been ordered by Al Capone and can be seen as the beginning of his end as it finally turned popular opinion against him.

Trailers from Hell on 

The St Valentine's Day Massacre:

The St Valentine's Day Massacre is one of Roger Corman's rare jobs for a major Hollywood studio, in this case Twentieth Century Fox, and he famously came in $400,000 under budget (and even complained that had he worked outside of the Hollywood system, he could have saved even more money). The movie is loosely based on an earlier version of the same tale entitled Seven Against The Wall, broadcast on CBS's Playhouse 90 (1956-61) in December 1958; the movie, like the TV version, was scripted by semi-forgotten mystery scribe turned TV writer, Howard Browne (15 April 1908 – 28 Oct 1999).

A man who knew his mettle, Brown's only other two feature-film credits are Portrait of a Mobster (1961) and Capone (1975 / trailer), the latter of which even incorporates material from The St Valentine's Day Massacre (but then, it was coproduced by Corman). In 2009, the British film glossy Empire listed the movie #7 on its list of "The 20 Greatest Gangster Movies You've Probably Never Seen". (Have you seen it? We haven't.) Dick Miller,by the way, shows up as one of the fake cops that guns everyone down at the titular massacre.

"A simple way to describe The St. Valentine's Day Massacre is that it is an old gangster film spiced up with some modern violence. Its docudrama approach […] gives it the feel of a newsreel brought to life, and Roger Corman's slick direction gives it that shot-on-the-backlot look that conjures up memories of The Roaring Twenties (1939 / trailer) and The Public Enemy (1931 / trailer).* However, the film amps up the casual brutality common to these films […] and the event alluded to in the title is handled in a memorably grisly and brutal fashion. Thankfully, this 'best of both worlds' approach works well and makes The St. Valentine's Day Massacre a rousing crime film. The script delivers a dizzying array of double-crosses and action set pieces, and Corman's direction gives it the snappy pace it needs. Best of all, it's got a fantastic cast that dives into the material with gusto: George Segal is gleefully nasty as a tough-guy enforcer Peter Gusenberg and Jason Robards (26 July 1922 – 26 Dec 2000, of Murders in the Rue Morgue [1971 / trailer, with Herbert Lom) gives a bombastic, scenery-devouring turn as Al Capone. It all adds up to fast, brutal fun that is well worth a look for fans of old-school crime films. [Donald Guarisco @ All Movie]"

* A film rarely screened today, The Public Enemy has one of the best, and hardest, endings ever put on film. One wonders why Q.T. hasn't worked it into one of his films, yet.

"Told in a straightforward, almost documentarian style by an omniscient no-nonsense narrator (Paul Frees [22 June 1920 – 2 Nov 1986]), the film provides a great deal of both insight and drama on the many events and key personalities that lead to a violent conclusion which is also serves as the film's title. Corman takes time to flesh out many real-life characters on both sides of the conflict, so when the violence erupts, those impacted aren't simply faceless gangsters but real people. [cinapse]"

A manly film full of manly men, the only female role of note in the movie is that of the gangster mole Myrtle, played by Jean Hale (above). A fact we mention only so we have an excuse to embed a murder from her feature-film debut, the Del[bert] Tenney produced Violent Midnight aka Psychomania (1963), also featuring James Farentino.

Murder! in

Violent Midnight:

The Dirty Dozen

(1967, dir. Robert Aldrich)

Ok, here Dick Miller truly does a blink-and-you-miss-him appearance, uncredited, as "MP at hanging" in this "classic", the granddaddy of all groups-gathered-to-die-while-executing-an-impossible-mission movie. Although there is surely a more recent offering of the genre out there, the most recent one that pops in our heads being Quentin Tarantino's war fantasy Inglourious Basterds (2009 / trailer), itself inspired by Enzo G. Castellari's Italo-version of Aldrich's tale, The Inglorious Bastards (1977 / trailer).  

Trailer to

The Dirty Dozen:

"[The Dirty Dozen was one of] the biggest boxoffice hit[s] of 1967 [and] led to scores of imitations, remakes and sequels. Robert Aldrich's brutal action film was highly criticized at the time for its excessive violence and general air of nihilism, but has remained an audience favorite through the decades. Yet Roger Corman got there first with a more modest version of the same story, The Secret Invasion (1964 / trailer further below). [Trailers from Hell]"

We here at a wasted life admit that we've fallen asleep both times we tried to watch the (probably) butchered version of The Dirty Dozen we caught on late-night television, but many people find this war movie exciting; many people even call it a classic. About the most interesting thing we found about the movie was the once-innovative trick of not showing any credits until after a long pre-credit sequence, something not commonly done prior to this movie. The cast is pretty cool, too… maybe one day we'll give it a go on DVD, thus without commercial breaks, and re-evolve our opinion of the movie. (Current view: it's a snoozer.)

Trailer to

 The Secret Invasion:

Based on the novel by E.M. Nathanson (17 Feb 1928 – 5 April 2016), a pal of the great Russ Meyer (21 March 1922 – 18 Sept 2004). E.M. Nathanson even participated in Meyer's early nudie-cutie, The Immoral Mr Teas (1959 / full movie). The screenplay, however, was written by Nunnally Johnson (5 Dec 1897 – 25 March 1977) and Lukas Heller (21 July 1930 – 2 Nov 1988), the former a Golden Age Hollywood screenwriter of note (for example, The Woman in the Window [1944 / full PD movie]), the latter, whose first job seems to have been "additional dialogue" for the Brit film Sapphire (1959), eventually became a regular scribe for director Robert Aldrich (9 Aug 1918 – 5 Dec 1983). The Dirty Dozen eventually begat a TV franchise of three TV movies — The Dirty Dozen: Next Mission (1985 / trailer), The Dirty Dozen: The Deadly Mission (1987 / trailer) and The Dirty Dozen: The Fatal Mission (1988 / German trailer) — as well as an unsuccessful and sanitized TV series, The Dirty Dozen, that lasted only one season (1988).

When the original film came out back in 1967, Dell Comics published a comic book version (estimated current value: $65.00 [Comic Book Realm]).

The plot: "Lee Marvin plays Major Reisman, an American army officer posted on British soil during WWII. He is brought in front of Generals Worden (Ernest Borgnine) and Denton (Robert Webber) who, in light of his dubious conduct in service, decide to hand him an inordinately difficult assignment: to train 12 court-martialled soldiers (most of whom are awaiting the noose) for a mission involving infiltrating a chateau in Rennes, France, and assassinating a number of high-ranking German officers who occupy the building. In exchange, their sentences will be reviewed. With the help of Sergeant Bowren (Richard Jaeckel [of Day of the Animals (1977)]), Reisman uses his unorthodox approach to discipline to whip the unruly ragtag bunch into shape. However, his efforts face challenges as he butts heads with one particularly defiant subordinate by the name of Victor Franko (John Cassavetes [9 Dec 1929 – 3 Feb 1989]) and an uptight superior officer named Colonel Breed (Robert Ryan) whom he crosses paths with. [Cinema's Fringes]"

"There is a plodding and unnecessary segment in the middle where the dozen plays war games against a rival officer's squad to show their worth that could have been left out, but the opening recruiting segment, the training sequence, and especially the daring raid at the end are spectacular. The Dirty Dozen is an exciting war film that provides evidence supporting Truffaut's assertion [that 'it's not possible to make an anti-war film because all war movies end up making war seem like fun']. [Andy's Film Blog]"

The original poster was done by Frank McCarthy (30 March 1924 — 17 November 2002). A successful American illustrator and artist, he left the commercial arts biz somewhere between 1968 and 74 (online sites disagree) to retreat to Sedona, Arizona, to become an artist specializing in scenes of the "Old West".

Of all the manly men on the ensemble cast, only one ever posed for Playgirl: former football player Jim Brown (of Mars Attacks [1996 / trailer]), who plays one of the more likeable and less-guilty of the characters, did the September 1974 centerfold, a photo of which we present below for your viewing pleasure. (If anyone out there happens to have a nude shot of The Dirty Dozen's manly Clint Walker, please send. That's him above with Jim Brown and one Playboy's all-time sexiest centerfold bunnies, Dolly Read, who went on to star in Russ Meyer's camp classic, Beyond the Valley of the Dolls [1970 / trailer])

The Devil's Angels

(1967, dir. Daniel Haller)

A.k.a. The Checkered Flag — "Big bad bikers butt heads with a small-town sheriff in this bargain-basement sleaze-fest. [Sandra Brennan]"

We see this movie as the one that got away: "Dick Miller started on this movie, but he was recast after a bike crash left him with several broken ribs. [imdb]" So let's look at a movie that doesn't have Dick Miller in it, but should have… 

VHS Trailer to 

The Devil's Angels:

Plot: "A member (Buck Kartalian [13 Aug 1922 – 24 May 2016], photo below not from the film]) of The Skulls motorcycle gang kills someone in a hit-and-run accident. He seeks refuge with gang leader John Cassavetes, who yearns for the good old days. At one time their gang was two hundred members strong. Now they are less than thirty. He decides the gang needs to find a small place they can call their own. They saunter into a small town, not wanting to make a fuss (well, they still steal and stuff, but it's pretty low key for them). The sheriff (Leo Gordon [2 Dec 1922 – 26 Dec 2000] of The Intruder  [1962], Nashville Girl [1976 / trailer] and Son of Hitler [1978 / first ten minutes]) tells them they have to leave town, but they can camp out on a nearby beach if they can maintain the peace. A young local girl (Mimsy Farmer) sneaks out to party with them and gets stoned out of her mind. She runs home and says the (mostly) innocent bikers raped her. The locals come after The Skulls and Cassavetes calls in reinforcements in the form of a giant biker gang. They take over the town and put the officials on trial. In the end, the bikers destroy the town while the disillusioned Cassavetes rides off alone. [Video Vacuum]"

Over at Senses of Cinema, scriptwriter Charles B. Griffith once said:  "They hired John Cassavetes, of all people. I was called into his hotel and he says, 'What the fuck is this shit?!', and I just say, 'Well, we wrote it last weekend in La Jolla and I didn't know you were going to be in it. If I'd known you were going to be in it, I would have shot myself!' [Laughs.] So he says, 'Fix this, fix this, fix this' and so I fix those and that was it. The changes did suit him and his acting ability. We never had anybody who could do what he could do. Then Roger blamed me, saying I made a better motorcycle picture for Danny Haller than him. I told him no, that was Cassavetes giving orders! […] Cassavetes definitely improved it all."

Also in the cast: former Italo-Americab weight trainer and B & C film bit part player Buck Kartalian (13 Aug 1922 – 24 May 2016) — the photo of him below is not from the fim.

"It's a fun biker flick with a strong cast and a thought-provoking story. If you're a biker film fanatic or just a fan of AIP/Roger Corman in general, I definitely recommend checking it out. [Cinema Retro]"

Go to Part III (1968-74)