As the photo and blog-entry title
above reveal, we're currently looking at the films of one of the ultimate cult
babes ever, a woman who needs no introduction to any and all red-blooded
American hetero male whose hormonal memory goes further back than the start of
the 80s: the great Uschi Digard.*
* A.k.a. 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 last we
heard retired in Palm Springs, CA. To learn everything you ever wanted to know
about her, we would suggest listening to the great interview she gave The
Rialto Report in 2013.
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...
Please
note: we make no guarantee for the validity of the release dates given… or of
the info supplied, for that matter.
Go here for
Uschi Digard, Part
I: 1968-69
Uschi Digard, Part
II: 1970, Part I
Uschi Digard, Part III: 1970, Part II
Uschi Digard, Part IV: 1971, Part I
The Egyptians Are Coming
(1971,
dir. Donald R. von Mizener)
A lost film supposedly featuring Uschi
Digard. Though listed on filmographies everywhere, no one seems to have ever
seen it — does it even exist? Who knows, but since we could not find a poster
or VHS cover to the movie, enjoy another random Uschi magzine cover instead...
Co-scriptwriter of The Egyptians Are Coming, William Mitchell, like the movie he supposedly scripted, has never been heard of again.
Donald R von Mizener Radio Show
on KIEV, 1989:
on KIEV, 1989:
The Erotic Adventures of Pinocchio
(1971,
writ. & dir. Corey Allen)
"It's not his nose that grows!"
"It's not his nose that grows!"
Co-written by Chris Warfield (29
March 1927 – 1 May 1996), who also co-produced the movie as "Billy
Thornberg", the name he used as director, writer and/or producer of a
number of Golden Age porn films.
And could it be? If the imdb
is correct, he's the man the pneumatic Eve Meyer [13 Dec 1928 – 27 Mar 1977],
pictured below from her 1955 Playboy
centerfold, married after divorcing Russ Meyer — a "fact" we haven't
been able to confirm elsewhere. (Is someone's nose growing?)
Both Chris Warfield and Pinocchio's
director Corey Allen (29 June 1934 – 27 June 2010) began as small-time actors,
with Allen even having a speaking part in Rebel
without a Cause (1955 / trailer).
Unlike Warfield, however, Allen eventually segued into TV and wrangled his way
into a long and successful career as a TV director.
Outside of his TV work, The Erotic Adventures of Pinocchio is
one of only three feature films Allen ever directed, the others being Thunder and Lightning (1977 / trailer), with Charles Napier in a small role, and the laughable disaster flick
Avalanche (1978 / trailer).
The cinematography was done by
cult director Ray Dennis Steckler (25 Jan 1938 – 7 Jan 2009), bad-film auteur extraordinaire.
Uschi shows up for a few breast-heavy moments in Pinocchio,
playing a lesbian named Lilly, with a man's voice. She's even credited on some
posters. This seems to be the only movie the guy playing Pinocchio, Alex Roman,
ever made; the name has since been taken by an unattractive, long-donged,
twinkie Italian bottom
living in Britain.
Edited trailer to
The Erotic Adventures of Pinocchio:
At All Movie,
Clarke Fountain offers the following synopsis: "This is a bawdy burlesque
version of the famous fairy tale. Instead of Gepetto, the old-man woodcarver,
we have Geppeta (Monica Gayle), an apparently frustrated and nubile young
virgin. Geppeta carves Pinocchio (Alex Roman) for herself as a gorgeous young
hunk. Geppeta's fairy godmother, a blonde played by Dyanne Thorne, magically
transforms the young stud Pinocchio into a living man, who is quickly brought
to work in the local whorehouse as a prize stud and exhibitionist. Nothing —
not even sex — is taken seriously in this lighthearted, semi-pornographic
offering."
For that, Teenage Frankenstein
says, "For all the talk of the softcore films of the era being more
innocent, this feels tawdry and sleazy despite being less explicit than the
eventual hardcore boom."
Scene with
Dyanne Thorne & Alex Roman:
Rock!Shock!Pop! was likewise not impressed: "Not the most interesting 'adult' film you'll
ever see, this one has its moments but is, for the most part, fairly
lackluster. The best thing about it is Dyanne Thorne (seen below not from the film), who is actually pretty
amusing as the fairy godmother. She's well cast, frequently naked, and clearly
in good spirits here, giving her all and delivering an enthusiastic performance.
Uschi is underused, but it's fun to see her in the small part she's been given.
Karen Smith looks great but her character [Mabella] is a cliché, while Monica
Gayle follows suit — she looks great, but Gepetta, despite being the female
lead for the most part, just isn't that interesting. The film puts too much
stock in Alex Roman. He looks the part, he's handsome enough and in good shape,
but he has no charisma at all and winds up sinking the film."
Back at All Movie,
Robert Firsching would beg to differ, saying: "This cute softcore
burlesque is worth seeing for the cast alone. Director Corey Allen takes a
rowdy, Benny Hill-type music hall
approach to the comedy, which isn't to everyone's taste, but has its moments. […]
Dyanne Thorne makes a great Fairy Godmother, and a running joke has her
accidentally making her own clothes disappear each time she waves her magic
wand. Alex Roman is funny and charming as Pinocchio, although by the end of the
film — when he's wandering around with a five-foot-long blanket-covered organ
in a baby carriage — one gets the feeling that he will never work again.
Rat-faced Eduardo Ranez is great as the smarmy JoJo, and later turned up in Cafe Flesh (1982 / scene).
[…]"
While we don't know the year that
The Erotic Adventures of Pinocchio was screened
at the Nebraskan Grand Island Drive-In Theatre, we
definitely find the quadruple-feature saliva-inducing. The New Adventures of Snow White aka Grimm's Fairy Tales for Adults (1969 / trailer / full bad film) is a
German sexploiter from director Rolf Thiele (7 Mar 1918 – 9 Oct 1994) that
features, among others, Walter Giller; Cinderella 2000 (1977 / trailer) is a
tacky sci-fi musical (!) exploiter by the fabulously Z-grade filmmaker Al
Adamson (25 July 1929 – 21 June 1995 [murdered]), who also made the disasterpiece Dracula vs. Frankenstein (1971);
and Alice in Wonderland (1976 / full film),
directed by Bud Townsend (17 Oct 1921 – 19 Sept 1997), the director of Nightmare in Wax
(1969), is a Golden Age attempt for an upscale musical porn movie. (Go to the Rialto Report for
Alice in Wonderland: What Really Happened.)
By the way, the title song to The Erotic Adventures of Pinocchio, entitled
Oh My Pinocchio, is sung by Kathy
Cahill, someone you've never heard of but who was an original members of an
easy listening singing group you've never heard of, The Doodletown Pipers...
a fact we mention just so that we can embed one of their songs below. Sleep
well.
The Exotic Dreams of Casanova
(1971, writ. & dir. Dwayne Avery)
(1971, writ. & dir. Dwayne Avery)
Since Harry Novak was the
executive producer of this movie, we took a look at it back Part VIII
of his R.I.P. Career Review, where we
cobbled the following together:
Aka The Young Swingers — but not to mistaken with the family music film
from 1963 of the same name (poster below).
Over at Letterboxed, jeff rouk calls this movie
"absolutely crazy": "A sort of Inception (2010 / trailer) meets Flesh Gordon (1974 / trailer below)
with the sci-fi replaced by a surreal courtroom 'drama'. It starts out as a
period piece. Casanova bedding a beautiful woman. Then it turns out that it's
Joe Casanova (a descendent of the more famous 18th-century Italian), and we're
actually at a swingers party arranged by, um, Santa Claus. Well, a guy named
Bastor (Jay Edwards) dressed as Santa (for the entire movie). After an extended
and already rather surreal orgy sequence (including whipping and whipped cream,
a man in a fez and a camp man watching some lesbians, a man dressed as Robin
Hood (John Vincent of The Psycho Lover
[1970 / trailer], The Cult [1971 / trailer] and Flesh Gordon) in a swing and a sailor
dropping soap in a shower... I could go on), Joe Casanova (Johnny Rocco of The Joys of Jezebel [1970 / first 2 minutes]) bumps
his head while (literally) swinging. This then leads to a dream / fantasy courtroom
scenario for the rest of the movie, itself littered with dreams / fantasies
within the dream. Of course this leads to the ultimate redemption of Joe (this
is a movie with a moral to it!), but it does become a bit difficult for a while
working out what is real and what isn't, especially as the cast all dress the
same wherever they are (or are undressed in many cases) [...] In the end, I
think I actually quite liked it, without really meaning to."
The no-budget poster above,
obviously enough, incorporates artwork by the great Tom of Finland, whose tales
seldom featured hot gals. [The Barrel Theatrette of
Melbourne no longer exists; it's now a Chinese restaurant.]
Uncensored Trailer to
Flesh Gordon:
Flesh Gordon:
At My Duck Is Dead, which never credits their sources, they
quote someone unknown as saying "For a sexploiter, The Exotic Dreams of Casanova exudes a fair degree of flair,
thanks to impressive costumes, Earl Marsh All's art direction, the meaty
musical score by Vic Lance (Mantis in
Lace aka Lila [1968 / trailer]),
and Sam Ryven's cinematography, which pulls out all the stops to prevent the
proceedings from ever becoming boring. Easily one of the classier offerings of
sex and sin from distributor Harry Novak, The
Exotic Dreams of Casanova is well worth a nocturnal visit."
The non-embeddable trailer can be
found here at EroProfile.
The Godson
(1971 writ. & dir. William Rotsler)
(1971 writ. & dir. William Rotsler)
Uschi plays someone named "Faye"
— and makes it onto the [censored] Japanese poster above, which we found at One Sheet Index.
Since Harry Novak
"Presented" this movie, we took a look at it back Part VIII
of his R.I.P. Career Review, where we
cobbled the following together:
Supposedly a.k.a. Head Strong, Headstrong and, in
Germany, as Blutjunge Mädchen —
Hemmungslos, under which title it was released there in 1975 as a porno
flick, once again by Germany's very own Sultan of Sleaze, Alois Brummer (12 May
1926 – 4 May 1984).
AV Club bitches that The
Godson follows "Novak's early-'70s formula: A few minutes of gangland
tough talk in some featureless office gives way to extended scenes of simulated
sex, with the principals positioning heads and legs precisely enough to avoid
an X rating. Then the crooks hook up and talk some more before the next buxom
distraction wanders in....."
The Grindhouse Database was also not
impressed by the movie: "What we got here is a soft-core porno which
follows the adventures of mob enforcer, and the Don's godson, Marco Santino
(played by Jason Yukon, who packs a nifty afro and sideburns). Marco's
currently stuck in the brothel business and has dreams of moving up in the
organization. All the while, he gets it on with the clients and we see the
clients get it on with the customers. [Excuse us? Are clients and customers not
the same thing?] That's all the plot really. Of course, there's an eventual
showdown between Marco and a rival in the end, but the outcome doesn't really
matter 'cause you'll be bored and won't care. Might not be hard to believe, but
despite alllllll the skin and allllllll the sex, this flick is really tedious."
The Godchildren
(1971,
writ. & dir. Robert E. Pearson)
Aka Hawaiian Split. A mafia movie, and an early mockbuster — long
before the term was even coined — riding on the coattails of, natch, The Godfather (1972 / trailer).
Interestingly enough, The Godchildren
hit the cinemas first.
Robert E. Pearson
(31 Jan 1928 – 4 July 2009) went on to direct two further exploiters, The
Devil and Leroy Bassett (1973 / a trailer) and Claws (1977 / full movie) before
eventually returning to Kansas to become a painter. The painting below is an
example of his work. Some people might remember Claws from when it was re-released as Grizzly 2 so as to ride on the success of William Girdler's Grizzly (1976 / trailer),
which was itself a riff on Jaws (1975 / trailer).
Letterboxd has a
plot description that sounds like a DVD blurb: "A mob courier (Christopher Geoffries) is given the responsibility of
transferring drugs from California to Hawaii. What he doesn't count on is his
backstabbing girlfriend (Sandy Carey) hiring an
assassin to steal his stash."
J4HI
says that this "real obscurity" is "exploitation fun wallowing
in the world of drug dealing, loose women, organized crime, torture, double
crosses and more. Complications arise in a lucrative scheme of running drugs
between Los Angeles and Hawaii. The standout here is the unknown Lindsey
Hillard as a cold-hearted hitman. He's a little like Dennis Weaver in Touch of Evil (1958 / trailer) with
Javier Bardem in No Country for Old Men
(2007 / trailer). Worth
checking out."
Divine Exploitation,
which calls the movie "freewheeling, convoluted exploitation filmmaking of
the highest caliber," says, "Now, for the Ushci Digard fans out there
who will watch this for only one reason. She's not in it a lot. There's a scene
where Johnny hooks up with this oddball character by the name of Bobby Lee
O'Toole (John F. Goff) who has two lovely ladies in tow, Lady Chatterley (Kathy
Hilton) and Lady Godiva (Rene Bond). They all go back to Bobby's place for much
naked frolicking and have so much fun that they have to contact Swedish Massage
expert Lotta Cuze (Uschi Digard) to fix Rene Bond. Naturally there is much
naked and rubbing of skin, but you're looking at about five minutes of film
tops."
Unexpectedly for a film of this ilk, the film ends with a bang instead
of a gang bang.
Trailer to
Slaughter Hotel (1971):
Slaughter Hotel (1971):
The Only House in Town
(1971,
dir. "Flint Holloway")
"Flint Holloway",
otherwise a.k.a. Ed Wood, Jr. — the mind does indeed boggle: Uschi in an Ed Wood
movie! Long thought lost, it was found sometime around 2002, an event that eventually
even found mention in The New Yorker. To what
extent The Only House in Town is
based (or inspired) the Ed Wood book of [almost] the same name, we do not know.
Trailer
to
Last Year at Marienbad:
Last Year at Marienbad:
The blogspot the-mad-doctor-of-cult-movies
has a blow-by-blow description of a movie seemingly divided into two parts: the
first, a male & female gangrape of a woman who, in good (soft and hardcore)
porno fashion begins to dig it, and the second with Uschi introducing "several
short stories which are acted out by the previously seen six cast members, all
of which feature Uschi totally nude and very involved in the hot and heavy
action."
According the blogspot Dead 2 Rights,
and as supported by the advert below (which, like the book cover image above
comes from that site), points out that "footage from the film was turned
into some 8mm loops available through mail-order called Lesbian Love and 4 Girls
& 3 Men Orgy."
They go onto to say, "As in the Steve
Apostolof films of the 1970s, the orgy scene here drones on and on. Ed is very limited
in terms of what he can show in a softcore movie, so mostly we see a lot of
writhing around with actors grinding their pelvises into one other. There is no
scripted dialogue here, though someone does shout directions from off-camera.
(A typical command: 'Do that again!') This doesn't sound like Ed's voice. Could
it have been Ted Gorley?
Whoever it is makes the mistake of referring to Uschi Digard by her real first
name: 'Touch Uschi's breast!' Boom microphones and their attendant shadows are
both in evidence."
As the ads above and below attest — all cribbed from the blogspot Dead 2 Rights — the movie even got screened in theaters. Unluckily, according to the Mad Doctor of
Cult Movies mentioned above, "Uschi
Digard later has gone on record as saying she has no memory of appearing in
this film."
And as mentioned at more than one website,
including Adult DVD Talk when the
movie came out Ed Wood reviewed it pseudonymously Wild Screen Reviews
Vol. 2, 1st Issue (1970), saying: "The
Only House in Town is one of those rare films that makes me glad I turned
down a bright future as a shoe salesman and became a reviewer. This is more
than just a good film — in many ways it may be a great film. [...] The Only House in Town is about lust,
rape, crime, hate, sex, love, money, death, blood, lesbians, orgies, whores,
bootleggers and ghosts. It is also the story of a house and what that house
does to people's minds. The house is old and rundown, the paint is peeling and
the place is ready to fall apart. A group of young hippies are living in the
place since the rent is cheap and the house is away from the rest of the
town."
At the dearly departed Georgian New
Glen Art Theatre, nee Glen Theatre,
The Only House in Town was paired with
an unknown movie entitled, at least there, Fantasy
of Love. At the former Danish World Books and Flicks at 410 Main Street, Racine,
Wisconsin, with an equally unknown title, Venice
Night. We assume without proof that the Kentuckian Cinema "X" Mini Theatre of the ad is the one once found
in Newport, Kentucky,;
there, Wood's flick was screened with yet another unknown title, Woman's Companion. But at the now-demolished
Alhambra
at 2121 E. Third Street in Dayton,
Ohio, The Only House in Town screened
with the early and now apparently lost Lee Frost (14 Aug 1935 – 25 May 2007)
movie, Captives
(1969), a pseudo-Danish softcore roughie. The Mini Vue in Albuquerque came
and went without leaving any traces, but Fred Baker's "intriguing low-budget underground feature" Events (1970 / a trailer below) is easily available today.
A trailer to
Fred Baker's Events:
Private Eye's, Public Display
(1971, dir. Unknown)
No poster online, no information — a lost film, it would seem, so
check your attic. As no source lists the film's length, it feasibly could simply
be a loop. But until it is found, we will never know for sure whether it's a
feature-length film or not, or whether there is a typo in the title or not.
(Who knows, maybe the real title is The
Private Eye's Public Display, or Private
Eyes, Public Display.) Till then, enjoy a random photo of Uschi instead.
Skin Flick Madness
(1971, writ. & dir. "Bluth Blaine")
(1971, writ. & dir. "Bluth Blaine")
As lor
says at the imdb, Skin Flick Madness is a
"transparently cheap compilation of porn loops." One can find it on
DVD and all over the web, but it probably is really hardly worth the effort.
Indeed, it was such a cheap production there never seems to have been a poster
or any lobby cards. The cheapness of it production warrants the meagerness of the Hustlervod.com
description of the movie taken straight from the DVD Uschi Digard Triple Feature 2, "Sandy Dempsey (11 April 1949 – 24 May 1975) fucks her
boyfriend in a theatre while watching porn loops, including Uschi 69ing a busty
young blonde (Phyllis Stengel)!"
Trailer to
Brain of Blood (1971):
Brain of Blood (1971):
Skin Flick Madness is, not surprisingly, the only known movie ever
made by "Bluth Blaine". Sandy Dempsey,
by the way, born 11 April 1949, died roughly four years after this film hit the
grindhouses in a boating accident in the Gulf of Mexico on 24 May 1975.
Wild Honey
(1971,
writ. & dir. Don Edmonds [1 Sept 1937 – 30 May 2009])
We took a look at this movie in Part IX
of Harry Novak's R.I.P. Career Review,
where we cobbled together the following:
Wild Honey is the directorial début of Don Edmonds (1 Sept 1937 —
30 May 2009), former and occasional actor (for example: Beach Ball [1965 / trailer] and Wild Wild Winter [1966 theme song below]*)
who, after this film, still did an occasional acting job (Home Sweet Home [1981 / trailer], for example)
but concentrated mostly on writing, producing and directing — including some true
sleaze classics: Ilsa: She Wolf of the
SS (1975 / trailer)
& Ilsa, Harem Keeper of the Oil
Sheiks (1976 / trailer).
Other films we find of note that he touched: Skeeter (1993 / trailer, with Charles
Napier), True Romance (1993 / trailer), Beyond Evil (1980 / trailer),
Saddle Tramp Women (1972), Tender Loving Care (1973) and the Charles
Napier vehicle, The Night Stalker
(1987).
* Both these surfer flicks also happen to feature the dearly
departed cult character actor, Dick Miller
(25 Dec 1928 – 30 Jan 2019).
Jay & the Americans singing
Two of a Kind from Wild, Wild, Winter:
Two of a Kind from Wild, Wild, Winter:
Over at Shocking Images, they have a
read-worthy interview of him in which he talks about Wild Honey: "I wrote a picture called Wild Honey, and that was the first film I ever directed. Something Weird has a tape of it. It's
too bad, because I've seen their tape, and it's chopped up something terrible.
The quality is fourth or fifth generation. I wish I could find the negative.
Harry Novak has it, but he won't give it to me. He distributed the picture, and
he won't even get on the phone with me. [...] It's badly chopped. [...] It was
a normal length, ninety-minute movie. It did really well, actually, when we put
it out. [...] Not hardcore, just the beginnings of naked stuff. In those days,
just putting tits on the screen was a big deal. I wanted to be a little more
flamboyant than that, but if you've ever seen Wild Honey, it's not a hardcore picture. It's a tits and ass
film." (Including those of cult faves Bambi Allen and Uschi Digert — and speaking of Uschi, that's her below.)
Online, we found a blurb from
Mike Accomando's classic fanzine, Dreadful
Pleasures: "Released by Harry Novak, Wild Honey is the tender tale of Gypsy (played by healthy-looking
Donna Young of Edward D. Wood Jr.'s Take
It Out in Trade [1970 / trailer], Stephen C. Apostolof's Five Loose Women [1974 / trailer] and Al Adamson's The Naughty Stewardesses [1975 / trailer below]). After almost being raped by
Daddy, she runs away from the farm and winds up in La La Land. Soon she is
partying with a squadron of hippies led by a space cadet named Astral (Allan
Warnick, seen somewhere in Mother, Jugs
& Speed [1976 / trailer])
and The Two Jakes [1990 / trailer]). 'What's your
sign?' he actually asks. They zone out on LSD. The meat of this softcore movie
concerns Gypsy's rise to stardom. She poses for stag photos and is genuinely
treated like a doormat by everyone. Then she lucks out and meets a lesbian
Madam who sets her up as a high-priced call girl. Money. Apartment. New car.
Gypsy's hit the big time. But it's not enough. She is insatiable now..."
Trailer to
The Naughty Stewardesses (1975):
Exploitation Retrospect is of the
opinion that Wild Honey is a
"Cinderella story gone horribly, horribly wrong": "A moral
fable, disguised as a sexploitation roughie fashioned as a loose cautionary
tale about why you shouldn't party with guys wearing black robes in the
Hollywood hills, there is still enough here to make you ponder the true nature
of morality, the decay of social mores; modern values and even to just blink
and wonder 'what the hell' to yourself. [...] Wild Honey was trite, stupid and unrealistic but it did have varied
thematic music for every setting and the flesh was excessive. I'll admit to one
thing, this film was so damned random, switching between moral message and
quasi-explicit action so frequently that I found myself not predicting what was
going to happen next, something that hardly ever happens to me when I watch a
film. Wild Honey was an aptly-named
little flick that was sweet and sticky at first, but just when you start to
enjoy its fleshy nectar it stings you at the end... does this look swollen to
you?"
Red, White and Blue
(1971, writ. & dir. Beverly & Ferd Sebastian)
A.k.a., in Germany, as Call Girl Report; and in Australia, as Sexual Freedom USA. A documentary
narrated by Robert Fitzpatrick
(2 July 1937 – 23 October 2010) and co-produced
by David F. Friedman.
Wikipedia
doesn't bother with Ferd, but does have an entry on Beverly: "Beverly
Sebastian is an American film director, writer, and cinematographer whose independent
films in the 1970s and 1980s were predominantly exploitation pictures similar
to the work of Roger Corman and other directors in the 1960s at independent
studios like American International Pictures. Her husband, Ferd Sebastian,
often co-directed with her. After directing Running Cool (trailer)
in 1993, she and her husband retired to Florida. As of 2012, Sebastian runs the
Greyhound Foundation, which saves Greyhound dogs retired from racing, gives
them medical assistance, and trains them with prisoners." A 1999 interview of Ferd can be found here at Mondo Stumpo.
Their most
famous film is undoubtedly 'Gator Bait (1974 / trailer below), which
stars 1970 Playboy "Playmate of
the Year" Claudia Jennings (20 December 1949 – 3 October 1979) and was
followed by the less-amazing 'Gator Bait II: Cajun Justice (1988 / trailer). Jennings naturally didn't take
part in the sequel: she died in an automobile collision on the Pacific Coast
Highway near Malibu, California when she was 29. Ferd, and possibly Beverly,
has since found god
and runs the website 2Jesus, which might explain why they
dropped out of exploitation. We took a look at him briefly in our R.I.P.: Richard Hugh Lynch career review,
for Lynch starred in their 1979 movie Delta
Fox (full movie).
Trailer to
'Gator Bait (1974):
Depending on how you look at it, Red, White
and Blue is either a documentary about porn in
the US of A, or American porn pretending to be a documentary.
Cinema Wasteland
sees things abit differently, saying, "Beverly and Ferd Sabastian's
documentary on Richard Nixon's silly, yet right up the GOP playbook, complete
waste of time and tax payer money, Commission
on Obscenity Reports, with (CW's mentor and free-speech hero) David F.
Friedman as a main subject."
Over at the possible illegal
download site Rarelust,
we find out both why the film is now hard to get and where Uschi is found in
it: "An incredibly rare film, the Sebastians decided to produce a
documentary focusing on the sexual revolution and how it was affecting media
and culture of the time. Sort of like a West Coast version of Gerard Damiano's Changes (1970 / trailer). You get to see footage of various
sex trade personalities testifying before the Commission on Pornography
(including Dave Friedman), behind-the-scenes footage of shooting 16mm softcore
and one-day wonders, a casting session in an agent's office including Uschi
Digard and other familiar faces (Debbie Osborne, etc.), and silhouette
confidential interviews with publishers and distributors in the adult book and
magazine industry. Fascinating from start to finish! SWV discontinued this
after the Sebastians approached them with paperwork on owning the movie, and
Ferd & Bev planned on releasing it on their own, but [...] nothing has come
of that proposal."
The documentary includes film
clips from, among other movies, the Friedman-scripted Trader Hornee (1970 / trailer), the influential classic I Am Curious (Yellow) (1967 /scene), and Quiet
Days in Clichy (1970 / trailer).
Full Short Film —
Muscle Beach (1948):
Muscle Beach (1948):
Among the others that appear in
the doc, the most notable names include Joseph Strick
(6 July 1923 – 1 June 2010) and Barney Rosset (28 May 1922 – 21 February 2012).
Strick was a documentary and art film maker whose intriguing projects included,
among many, Muscle Beach (1948 /full
film above), The Savage Eye
(1960), and the unnerving Interviews
with My Lai Veterans (1971). Barney Rosset,
in turn, was the former owner (from 1951 to 1985) of the New York book
publisher Grove Press and one of the great and influential advocates and
warriors for free speech in America. The trailer below is to the 2007 feature
documentary about him, Obscene.
Trailer to
Obscene:
Obscene:
Information Processing (1971)
Less a documentary short than an
educational film, though who know for whom, from CRM Productions.
CRM Closing Logo:
Uschi, fully dressed for a change, is
one of the many party guests at the party at which the movie is set, going by
the description found at OCLC World Catalog:
"Using for its base a crowded, noisy cocktail party as observed from a
control booth, [Information Processing]
analyzes how people process information. Pretty girls and bizarrely dressed
men, including some improvisational actors, demonstrate attention, language
processing, long and short term memory, mnemonics, retrieval strategies, and
problem solving."
One could well assume that the
movie was "directed" by the movie's producers, the husband and wife
team of Carole Hart (30 April 1943 – 5 Jan 2018) and Bruce Hart (15 Jan 1938 – 21 Feb 2006). But if we're to
believe 16MM Lost & Found,
Bruce Hart made the film and Carole only contributed as producer. (Women never do anything.)
The website also says, "The Harts were two of the original writers on Sesame Street,
and are perhaps best-known for [producing] their award-winning album Free To Be…You And Me (opening credits)."
Bruce Hart, by the way, wrote the
lyrics to Mama Cass's (19 Sept 1941 – 29 July 1974) non-hit One-Way Ticket, a fact mentioned only
as an excuse to embed the song below.
"Mama Cass" Elliot singing:
Go to Uschi Digard, Part VI
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