Short Film: Raising a Nuisance (Detroit, 2016)

It's hot outside. It's hot inside. It's hot everywhere — too hot to concentrate on writing a blog entry. So, for this month's Short Film of the Month here's a short entry for a short little visual ditty: Playing Possum Productions' Raising a Nuisance.

Plot: "A Necromancer tries to raise an army of the undead to take over the world, but she unwittingly only revives one campy skeleton, who tries his best to please his new master." (Hmm… shouldn't that be: "[…] which tries its best to please its new master"?)

 Nothing deep here: just a pleasant homage to silent movies featuring some well-done stop motion work. Short. Fun. Enjoy. (We'll ge verbose again next week, when this European heatwave is — we hope — over with.)

Raising A Nuisance from Jason McCullough on Vimeo.

PS: Playing Possum Productions are/were Danielle Raymond, Jason McCullough, Justin Hoffman and Stevie Quigley.

Vampire Circus (Great Britain, 1972)

Terse review: Passable Hammer film about, more or less, a vampire circus, that Hammer fans will probably like and others might find, more or less, cheesy.

Verbose Review: (Spoilers.) As Hammer points out at their website, despite the fact that only about a third of their films were traditional horror films, the name Hammer is nevertheless "synonymous with horror". Founded in 1934, the Hammer that most people "know" today was born in 1957, when it released its "first full colour creature feature" The Curse of Frankenstein. One of their best films and an undisputed classic, its massive success led the way to the almost as good Horror of Dracula (1958 / trailer) and the less than impressive The Mummy (1959), both of which were financially successful. Thanks to the subsequent regular release of lushly colored films of horror and terror and suspense that were to follow over the next 15 odd years, Hammer became forever associated with the concept of high quality, if perhaps sometimes extremely unsubtle, British horror.

Indeed, Hammer has long been a kind of Holy Cow: going by what many fans of Hammer horror films seem to believe, not only did Hammer never release a truly bad movie, but Hammer movies in general are beyond reproach. Dare we disagree? While we tend to find that it may be true that Hammer never released a movie that is completely un-enjoyable — after all, the color is always scrumptious, the acting normally convincing, the production design a visual delight, the visceral not lacking, and the babes and their cleavages (in the earlier movies) and/or naked breasts (in the later films) transcendentally droolable — we would say that not all their "classics" truly are perfect, and are often less than a "classic".

One of the biggest flaws behind this is often found in the scriptwriting department, where on occasion those writing often tended to play much too loosely or sloppily with plot developments that are, in the end, indefensible. (As in the mess that is the "classic" The Brides of Dracula [1960], for example, where the most unforgivably loose and sloppy narrative development is how Dr. Van Helsing [Peter Cushing], after being bitten by the vampire, prevents his own conversion by first burning the bite with a hot iron and then pouring a little holy water over it. Wonder if that would work with HIV.)

Vampire Circus, despite being one Hammer's less renown titles, is nevertheless often touted by Hammer-heads (is that a word?) as a latter-day classic. One of the firm's twilight releases, it hit the theaters around the same time as the far superior Dr Jekyll & Sister Hyde (1971) and the continually underrated Countess Dracula (1971 / trailer), the latter of which Vampire Circus often shared a double-bill. Though generally the second on the bill, the Ingrid Pitt horror is actually the better film.

Nevertheless, Vampire Circus is indeed a fun and entertaining movie, but much like the subsequent Hammer trash classic The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires (1974), it is actually enjoyable despite itself instead of for the sum of its whole. It in no way can seriously be called a good movie and in no way deserves being called a classic, but if the viewer remains in a forgiving mood, it can nonetheless remain an amusing viewing experience.* But to label it a classic does disservice to the true classics of Hammer's oeuvre (like the previously mentioned Curse of Frankenstein, for example, or Hammer's equally lush and effectively horrific Plague of the Zombies [1966 / trailer]), and thus should simply not be done. Vampire Circus, as fun as it is, is actually far more a prime example of a missed opportunity: a sloppy script, some questionable acting, and a possibly tight budget prevent it from coming anywhere close to being a truly effective (or affective) horror movie. (Some of the sets were supposedly recycled from the earlier and better vampire film, Twins of Evil [1971 / trailer] — but then, set recycling was always common in Hammer films.)

* We should perhaps say that with reserve. At the screening we saw, we were the only one of the five viewers in total for whom "Hammer Films" meant anything. Of the other four, all Hammer newbies, one enjoyed the movie for "its stupidity" while the other four dismissed it with "we've watched worse [movies]".

The basic plot involves a town which, at the instigation of the cuckolded schoolmaster Albert Muller (Laurence Payne [5 June 1919 – 23 Feb 2009], of The Crawling Eye [1958 / trailer] and The Tell-Tale Heart [1960 / trailer]), whose wife Anna (Domini Blythe [28 Aug 1947 – 15 Dec 2010]) has discovered she prefers the blood sausage of Count Mitterhaus (Robert Tayman, of House of Whipcord [1974 / trailer]), convinces the town that one too many child has gone missing and to destroy the Count. They do so, and though they seem to know the rule of the stake in the heart, they neither behead or burn him, and instead allow Anna to drag his body into a cellar crypt before, in what appears to be a somewhat budgetarily strained scene, they burn down the castle. Anna escapes in search of Mitterhaus's cousin Emil (Anthony Higgins, as Anthony Corlan, of Flavia, the Heretic [1974 / trailer], The Draughtsman's Contract [1982 / trailer] and Malice in Wonderland [2009 / trailer]), who "will know what to do".

A full 15 years later, when the town of Stetl* is being forcefully quarantined ("shoot to kill") due to a plague-like disease, she — now played by the MILFy Adrienne Corri (13 Nov 1930 – 13 March 2016, of Devil Girl from Mars [1954 / trailer], A Clockwork Orange [1971 / trailer], and Madhouse [1974 / trailer]) — finally rolls into town again as part of a gypsy circus called the Circus of the Night, the titular "vampire circus", to revenge and revive the Count. For the most part, however, the concentration is on revenge, for though the Count proves easy to revive in the end, she and Emil and the rest of the circus are far more interested, it seems, in playing with the intellectually challenged townspeople than un-staking the Count. (Indeed: one wonders, after the un-staking takes place and the Count rises, why she didn't simply pull out the stake 15 years earlier after she had dragged his body to the safety of the cellar crypt.)

* Interesting choice for a name: traditionally, "Shtetl" was the name often given in the 19^th century to small, Eastern European towns populated primarily of Jews. As such, crosses should perhaps have been rarer in this film than they already are.

In terms of direction, it must be said that there have been stronger, more-assured directorial debuts than that of then-newbie Robert Young (whose later films include Blood Monkey [2007 / trailer] and Curse of the Phoenix [2014 / trailer]). Visually, his eye is strong enough, but he definitely let some odd characterization slip by, the most appalling being that of the almost comical Burgermeister (Thorley Walters [12 May 12 1913 – 6 July 1991, of Sherlock Holmes and the Deadly Necklace [1962], The Earth Dies Screaming [1964 / trailer], The Psychopath [1966 / trailer] and Trog [1970 / trailer], among other). And while the fangs of the various vampires look real and horrific enough, the width with which Young has the vampires open their mouths tends to draw giggles, especially when one can't help but notice the silver fillings on a back tooth or two. The big love scene between Anna and Count Mitterhaus is also rather anemic, hardly erotic or sensual at all unless you belong to the kind that has a kink for sniffing underarms — for that, however, the way Anna basically orgasms earlier at the sight of him sinking his teeth into the innocent child Jenny (Jane Derby) is indeed perversely sexual and somewhat unnerving.

More so than Young's inexperience as a director, the biggest failing to the film is undoubtedly the uneven, somewhat scattershot script credited to Jud Kinberg (7 July 1925 – 2 Nov 2016). Interestingly enough, Kinberg pulls is aspects of the vampire generally ignored by most vampire films — Emil, for example, is a shape-shifter and does much of his evil in the form of a black panther, often in daylight* — but, even as Kinberg allows some characters to have such knowledge as "put the stake in his heart", he denies them conscious knowledge of the need to behead and burn or that revival occurs when the stake is removed. Fellow vampire Emil, for example, who should "know what to do", doesn't even bother to pull out the stake from the Count's chest and, instead, simply concentrates on fulfilling the Count's curse by killing the townspeople and their children. An odd oversight, to say the least.

* As is generally ignored in modern lore but pointed out in Stoker's rather turgid novel Dracula, in which the titular vampire takes the form of an animal on occasion, vampires are merely weakened by daylight, not killed. Of course, one cannot help but question how much power is needed to maintain the form of a man-killing black panther, something Emil obviously has no problem doing at all in daylight, but the King of the Undead himself, Dracula, is unable to do so in the novel. Other noteworthy vampires of yesteryear — e.g., Lord Ruthven, Varney the Vampire and Camille — could also day walk, though shape-shifting was not among their talents. The concept that sunlight kills vampires first appeared in 1922 in the famous German silent film (and unauthorized adaptation of Stoker's novel), Nosferatu (film).

Equally odd is how the cross only seems to work when it is consciously perceived by the vampires. The film's nominal female heroine, the young and spunky Dora (Lynne Maria Frederick [25 July 1954 – 27 April 1994] of Saul Bass's Phase IV [1974 / trailer], Lucio Fulci's The Four of the Apocalypse... [1975 / German trailer] and Peter Walker's Schizo [1976 / shopping]), only survives the first kidnapping attempt of the acrobatic twin vampires Heinrich (Robin Sachs [5 Feb 1951 – 1 Feb 2013 of Ravager [1997 / German trailer]) and Helga (the enigmatic Lalla Ward) when the crucifix she is wearing is suddenly revealed. Believable — far more so, at least, than the fact mentioned in passing that the two young-adult vampires are the children of the non-vampire Gypsy Woman (nee Anna), who left the town only 15 years earlier. (One can only assume that the Woman/Anna was speaking metaphorically when she called them "My children".)

But to return to the Christian cross. What is less comprehensible is what transpires one of the film's later big scenes, the second attempt of the two vampires to get her, when she takes refuge in a school chapel, which the twins have no problem entering despite it being, in theory, hallowed ground. Not only that, they only react to the huge cross high in the chapel's arches after Dora stands directly next to it, a bit as if "out of sight, no power". And that the huge cross needs to puncture but one breast to kill two vampires is also an anomaly that causes some head-scratching. (Prior to this scene, however, the film positively induces guffaws of laughter by suddenly introducing a bunch of unseen-but-heard boarding students laughing and partying loudly upstairs — in a town that is being decimated by the plague!?!)

If all that were not flawed enough, the narrative promptly sees the core human "good guy" characters make yet another illogical and laughter-inducing action that can only lead to the assumption that the entire town is inhabited by sub-intelligent people: although the school has been proven an unsafe place of refuge — not only have the party-happy students been slaughtered, but seconds before both Dora and the movie's young male hero Anton (John Moulder-Brown of Deep End [1970 / trailer] and The House that Screamed [1970 / trailer]) just barely escaped certain death at the hands of invasive vampires — Dora and a nonary (perhaps duodenary) character named Gerta (Elizabeth Seal of Menahem Golan's Mack the Knife [1989 / trailer]) are left there again, weaponless, "for their safety" while all the men runs off to attack the circus. Needless to say, not only do they not stay safe very long, but Gerta is soon history…

The bodycount of Vampire Circus is high, and many of the deaths are both affective and brutal, if not bloody and/or violent (if perhaps not quite as bloody and violent as they would be in a film made today). Plus points must be given to the movie for being one that has absolutely no qualms about killing the kids — but then, the death of families was specified in Count Mitterhaus's dead-side curse. But amidst the bodies that fall, the deaths of two extremely negligible adult characters do stick out as truly what-the-fuck and senseless, if only because their demise is so illogical.

To explain: from its initial appearance, it is obvious that not all the members of the Circus of the Night, which we learn later from Dr. Kersch (Richard Owens [26 Sept 1931 – 3 Nov 2015]) has left a trail of vampiric deaths in its trail, are vampires. Aside from the Gypsy Woman (nee Anna), there are the loyal circus dwarf Michael (Skip Martin [28 March 1928 – 4 Nov 1984] of The Masque of the Red Death [1964] and the cult fav Horror Hospital [1973 / trailer]) and the equally loyal-till-death hot-bodied strongman (David Prowse of Russ Meyer's Blacksnake [1973 / trailer], and both The Horror of Frankenstein[1970 / trailer] and Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell [1974 / trailer]). And, one assumes, the Webers (Milovan and Serena*), the circus's two dancers that perform an animal-and-whip-themed erotic dance that in real life would surely have seen them pilloried at that day and age (a dance scene cut from the original stateside release of the movie). One assumes that such decadent dancers were not simply picked up along the way by the circus, but were part of the team long enough to know their employers and, in all likelihood, be as loyal as the rest of the team. So where is the logic in the two-second scene close to the film's end that shows the dancers bitten, blood-drained and dead beneath a circus wagon? Looks and feels more like a scriptwriter was simply desperate to get rid of minor two characters…

* The NSFW blogspot Drink Me All, which once had the photos to the then couple's "steamy" layout in the May 1971 issue of the British men's rag, Men Only, says "Milovan and Serena were performers at the Raymond Revuebar in Soho that year [1971]. […] There is no clue as to their nationality, other than Milovan's Balkan name. It does say that they met when they were both working at the Folies Bergere in Paris. Milovan had another dance partner at this point but it wasn't long before they became a couple on and off the stage. 'The fact that we love each other obviously adds to the conviction of our erotic movements on stage,' says Milovan in the text. […] The article finishes by noting that the two had just signed a contract to appear in Hammer Film's The Vampire Circus. In fact the sequence involving Milovan and Serena's dance was filmed in early September 1971 at Pinewood Studios and the film premiered on 20th April 1972." In Howard Maxford's book Hammer Complete, Maxford correctly states that "[Vampire Circus] appears to be the only film appearance of Milovan (full name Milovan Vesnitch)", but then promptly proceeds to confuse Serena the Dancer with Serena (Robinson) the American porn star… But, NO: The Serena of Vampire Circus is not a.k.a. Serena Blacklord | Serena Blacquelord | Serena Blaquelord | Blaquelourde | Jenn Gillian | Jen Gillian | Zarina Guillian | Shanna Kramer or Sirena, and definitely did not go on to appear in soft- and hardcore movies like Black Lolita (1975), Fantasm (1976, with the Great Uschi), Dracula Sucks (1979), Small Town Girls (1979), Olympic Fever (1979), Insatiable (1980), Aunt Peg (1980) and Trashi (1981). (Sorry, Maxford.)

OK, after all the above, one might assume that we think that Vampire Circus sucks empty jugulars on flaccid penises. Not true, although (as we already mentioned) most of those with whom we screened the movie do think that, more or less. We ourselves, on the other hand, simply think it is a highly flawed movie — and dislike how no one ever seems to want to mention the flaws, choosing instead to simply echo the "It's a classic" mantra. The script is simply too imperfect, the low budget too obvious, and the direction occasionally too unsure for Vampire Circus to truly be a classic.

On the other hand, it is a highly idiosyncratic movie that does on occasion defy its blemishes with flashes of perverse or horrific or visual brilliance. If you are a forgiving person and capable of turning a blind eye to the more gregarious faults of the movie, it becomes an entertaining and surprising oddity, and an intriguing and enjoyable filmic experience. Vampire Circus is simply not a movie for everyone — whether or not the film might be your cup of tea, you probably already know.

P.S.: As mentioned at the start of this review, Hammer fans will probably like Vampire Circus more than the average Joe. Thus it is perhaps not surprising that the Hammer-centric magazine Little Shoppe of Horrors has even dedicated an entire issue, #30, to the movie. Quote/unquote: "In 1971, Hammer Films produced a film that was a Grimm's fairy tale for its time, with images straight out of Fellini and Bergman. Vampire Circus was the first film for director Robert Young and filled with young performers and other actors not normally associated with Hammer horror films. But it was a knockout and a huge cult favorite to this day. LSoH gives you the complete behind-the-scenes story with interviews with all the key people in front of and behind the camera, most never interviewed before, in-depth, about the film. (Note: There is nudity in this issue, as there was in the movie.)"

Babes of Yesteryear – Uschi Digard, Part VI: 1972

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

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

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

Go here for
Uschi Digard, Part I: 1968-69
Uschi Digard, Part II: 1970, Part I
Uschi Digard, Part III: 1970, Part II
Uschi Digard, Part IV: 1971, Part I
Uschi Digard, Part V: 1971, Part II

Pornography in Hollywood

 (1972, dir. "John Kirkland")

A.k.a. The Blue Box. According to Jason S. Martinko's The XXX Filmography, 1968-1988, and thus to virtually every other source found, director "John Kirkland" is none other than the Carlos Tobalina, a filmmaker we've taken a closer look at in many R.I.P. Career Reviews, but never as in-depth as at R.I.P.: Harry Reems, Part VII (1986-2013). If Tobalina was indeed the "real" director of this feature film, it explains why he and his films are given so much attention in this "documentary".

Martinko says: "The rare Carlos Tobalina documentary was produced by Kirt Films and distributed theatrically in the USA by Distribpix in 1972. It features clips from the sexploitation films Dirty Pool [1970, see Part II], I Am Curious Tahiti [1970, dir. Tobalina, poster above] and 101 Acts of Love (1971 / NSFW movie). Permissiveness in Hollywood was the bowdlerized title. The trailer for this film appears in Pornography in New York (1971 / full film / poster below)."

Interestingly enough, Carlos Tobalina, though a West Coast filmmaker, appeared as a talking head in the last-named "documentary" as well.

Whether "John Kirkland" was a real person or not is up to question, but he's also credited in projects that have no link to Tobalina: for example, as director to Curse of the Headless Horseman (1972 / full film below), second unit director of The Jekyll and Hyde Portfolio (1971 / scene), or even as a gaffer for Dolemite (1975 / trailer). In general, however, "John Kirkland" is accepted as one of many pseudonyms used by "Leonard Kirtman", or Leonard Katz, the CEO of Kirt Films, and also the producer of both Pornography in New York (as "Gary Young") and Pornography in Hollywood. The Temple of Schlock, like others, flat-out accepts Kirtman as the director of Curse of the Headless Horseman. Thus, it could be argued that Kirtman might be the actual director of this movie.

Leonard Kirtman, in any event, had a long and productive career as a pornographer, with a few odd horror movies tossed in as well, but he seems to have disappeared soon after video took over. (But then again, maybe he just changed careers. Look his name up at LinkedIn.)

Full movie —

Curse of the Headless Horseman (1972):

"Ron Rheego", the scriptwriter of this and several other no-budget porn entries from the period, is actually the author George C. Chesbro (4 June 1940 – 18 Nov 2008), whom Playboy, according to the Washington Post, once described as "Raymond Chandler meets Stephen King by way of Alice's looking glass."

Uschi, in any event, appears in this film due to the clips taken from the earlier exploiter, Dirty Pool (1970, see Part II).

Keep It Up

(1972, dir. Conrad Foxx)

A.k.a. Seitsemän Seksikästä Seksipupua, this is yet another mostly lost film. We say "mostly lost" because a short version of the movie showed up on Something Weird's long no-longer available video Twisted Sex Trailers: Volume 22 (2006). Keep It Up is not to be confused with the British sex comedy of around the same time, Keep It Up, Jack (lobby card below).

The original English title to Conrad Foxx's sexploiter sounds very much like an early Viagra commercial, decades before Viagra was even there. But, no, it was a film with a "plot"… And the plot? "On a bet, a young man has two days to 'conquer' four reputably unapproachable women. A vulgar sex film. [Filmdienst]"

Neither director "Conrad Foxx" nor scriptwriter "Roger Thompson" ever made another movie under those names. According to issue 16 of Skrifter (1973), Alex Ingle and Charles Alan produced this movie for Charlen Productions — a "Charles Allan" also appears in the movie. Neither Ingle, Alan nor Allan have been heard of since. Nor has "Charlen Productions", for that matter.

The imdb says the distribution was done by Sack Amusement Enterprises, a now-defunct, white-owned Texas firm founded in 1919 by Alfred N. Sack (22 Oct 1898 – 1 Mar 1969) and his brother Lester. The firm has its place in film history as having been one of the first and largest distributors of "race films", but ended its days presenting movies like this one here; the fun Harry Wuest movie, She Mob (1968 / poker); and Gunther Perdue's Uncle Tomcat's House of Kittens (1967), the last a film that poses that immortal question, "What happens when five purring pussycats and one dizzy detective pile into one bawdy bed?" One of Sack Amusement Enterprises' biggest "race film" successes was the movie The Blood of Jesus (1941 / poster above / full movie), but we prefer their "documentary", Africa Speaks (1930). 

The full film —

Africa Speaks (1930):

  Runaway Hormones

(1972, writ. & dir. "Pierre Lafarce")

One-sheet Index has the one-sheet description: "Lance Steele (Mike Gavin), a brilliant scientist working on a government-sponsored research project to combat food shortages, discovers that a livestock-breeding serum he has been experimenting with has an aphrodisiac effect on the animals he has injected. When he arrives home to tell his wife (Uschi Digard), Lance finds her in the arms of his best friend, and their marriage is shattered. To add insult to injury, the government discontinues the research project. When Lance departs, he takes the serum with him. He is out for revenge: against women because of his wife, and against society because of his job. Thus, he accepts employment as a lab technician for the world's largest lipstick manufacturer. Unbeknownst to the company officials, Lance combines the aphrodisiac serum with the lipstick formula. Within a week of the lipstick's appearance in the local stores, a strange malady has gripped the area. Thousands of reports are coming in of women attacking and raping innocent men. All countries of the world are affected. Eminent scientists, ecologists, physicists, engineers, and medical men work day and night to find a solution. Needless to say, Lance is highly amused at the results of his endeavor. Eventually, however his exploits catch up with him. Two of his 'victims' invite him on their boat for a 'pleasure' cruise. He finds their company enjoyable until he is no longer able to satisfy their insatiable demands. Lance begins to see the error of his ways. He finds it no longer enjoyable to be overpowered by females and treated like a spineless puppy. He wants to assert his masculine instinct. At a chance encounter in a park, Lance meets an understanding nurse who performs abortions in a local hospital. Their friendship leads to marriage. The serum is now placed in cold storage and the world returns to 'normal' — until?"

Pierre Lafarce is of course a pseudonym, but we would like to connect some dots. Runaway Hormones was originally distributed by Parliament, a firm we know nothing about. But that firm also distributed The Playmates (1973 / film), Black Lolita aka Wildcat Women (1975 / scene / trailer) and the lost film Scoring! (1985), all films produced, written and directed by someone named Stephen Gibson, though he often hid behind assumed names — including, for The Playmates, "Pierre La Farce". So… who do you think probably directed Runaway Hormones? (Of course, seeing that all names no longer make films, it could be that all names are fake… in this regard, we cannot fully connect all dots, but the last known directorial effort of "Stephen Gibson", credited under another older pseudonym, "Norm de Plume", is Hackin' Jack vs. the Chainsaw Chick 3D (2017).

Trailer to

Hackin' Jack vs. the Chainsaw Chick 3D (2017):

A highly interesting and long forgotten person associated with this movie is the man listed at the imdb as the cinematographer: Hal Guthu (1923 – 27 Feb 2000), seen below. Guthu also did the cinematography for, among other sleazesploitation, Ed Wood's Take It Out in Trade (1970 / trailer), Mrs. Stone's Thing (1970 / theme song), and Necromania: A Tale of Weird Love! (1971 / film). (According to Rudolph Grey, "Necromania was shot at Hal Guthu's studio, on a weekend.") But Guthu earned most of his money as a talent agent, specializing in adult films and magazines prior: sexploitation was his specialty, and his gals ranged from Rene Bond to Barbara Mills to Danni Ashe to Hellion's singer Ann Boleyn, but he never went into triple-X (or at least not very often).

According to what Nick Millard says at (Re)Search My Trash, he was even Uschi Digard's agent. His death, by bullet through the head in his burned-out office, was officially ruled a suicide. In David K. Frasier's Suicide in the Entertainment Industry, Frazier writes that Hal Guthu "established a large and devoted client base during his nearly 40-year career by treating everyone with honesty and respect in an industry not known for either virtue." (Read some Memories of Hal Guthu.) Not everyone is convinced the official cause of death tells the full story, as John H. Richardson reveals in his at times oddly sad article, Death of a Small Timer.

 Was it murder?

North Mission Road: The Bird's Tale:

Saddle Tramp Women

(1972, dir. "Godfrey Daniels")

A.k.a. Tough Guns, Two Rode with Death and Tramp Women. We took a look at "Godfrey Daniels", aka Stu Segall, in R.I.P.: Harry Reems, Part VI (1985), when we looked at the second-to-last film he directed, Hot Blooded (1985 / full NSFW film), pointing out that that movie is "the last porno project of Stu Segall (as Godfrey Daniels), who went on to become a successful producer of such series as Silk Stalkings (1991-99 / intro) as well as the founder of the San Diego production facilities, Stu Segall Productions. […] Of more interest to us here at a wasted life are a variety of Stu Segall's early credits: as Godfrey Daniels or Ms. Michelle Krelmn or Ms. Ricki Krelmn or P.C. O'Kake or Arthur Byrd he wrote and/or directed and/or produced such fun early sleaze as Saddle Tramp Women (1972 / full movie)…"

This is the first movie in which both Uschi Digard and Candy Samples appear, admittedly uncredited (the photo of them above does not come from this movie) and both in tiny roles. Candy was never our cup of tea — her trademark wigs were horrible, and she was a MILF back when we were too young to appreciate MILFs — but she is an icon of the era. The Rialto Report has a good podcast interview with her (18 Oct 2015) that once again reveals most men can't be trusted. 
Saddle Tramp Women was written by Don Edmonds (1 Sept 1937 – 30 May 2009), whom many might remember as the director of a couple of Ilsa films that we'll look at later. 

Not used in the movie —

 Marty Robbins' Saddle Tramp:

Over at letterbxd, Gustaf Ottosson, who gives the film three stars, points out that "this film was released in two versions. Saddle Tramp Women is the title of the short version, which I'm guessing contains a lot less nudity and possibly less violence. The version I've seen was released under the name Tough Guns and features lots of softcore sex scenes. The running time of the latter stretches to 90 minutes, so there is a significant difference between the two. […] The film features a cast with adult superstars of the Golden Age such as Candy Samples, Sandy Dempsey and Rene Bond; all of them more than willing to perform nude, but also perform surprisingly well regarding the acting. The sex scenes are cunningly woven into the plot to create an authentic feeling (not like many adult features in which the plot is merely the set up for explicitness). […]"

Alpha Blue includes the film on their DVD Saddle Tramp Women: 4-Film Western Collection, and at Rock! Pop! Shock! Ian Jane took a look, called the movie a "ninety-minute feature-length sexploitation western featuring decent production values and a good cast."

Something that ccmiller1492, at imdb, more or less agrees with, going by what he wrote: "A mournful and vengeful old man keeps a vigil at the graveside of his son, sending a hired vagrant to assassinate those responsible for his death. After executing his son's killer, the hireling is sent back to bring in the other man, a black bounty hunter, who was an accomplice in the killing of Billy Dan Clanton. But the vagrant pays a black friend to impersonate the bounty hunter and tell the old man the true story of how the rotten young Billy was an outlaw and a rapist, deserving to be shot down like the mangy dog he really was. During the tale the viewer sees flashbacks depicting the cowardice, viciousness and licentiousness of Billy Dan (John Alderman in a memorable performance) which includes the brutal gang rape of a rancher's daughter. With a little less sleaze and better production values this could have been a much better film. Unlike the antiseptic A-list big budget westerns, which were more mythical than convincing, this rancid little entry is surprisingly effective, gritty and repugnant like much of the real history of the lawless west. Alderman, a charismatic presence in all his films no matter how sorry they were, pretty much carries the whole show. And the ending is like a shot in the head!"

Saddle Tramp Women is the movie playing at the drive-in where Stu Segall's Drive-In Massacre (1976 / trailer) is set. John Alderman (6 June 1933 – 12 Jan 1987), who was known to use his third leg in hard-core porn (usually as "Frank Hallowell"), can be found in many a memorable film, including: Cleopatra Jones (1973), The Black Godfather (1974 / trailer), Escape from the Planet of the Apes (1971 / trailer), Superstition (1982 / trailer), New Year's Evil (1980 / trailer), Love Camp 7 (1969 / trailer), Hannah, Queen of the Vampires (1973 / trailer), Black Samson (1974 / trailer) and so much more... 

Trailer to the Harry Novak produced

Delinquent School Girls (1975):

Including that non-classic piece of sleaze Delinquent School Girls (1975 / trailer above), a fact we mention only as an excuse to share some good news with fellow fans of the legendary hippie nude model Roberta Pedon, whose only known film appearance is in Delinquent School Girls. Recent research by The Rialto Report reveals that Roberta's legendary past and tragic end — born in Ohio on 2 May 1954, real name Rosma Laila Grantoviskis, of Latvian of Jewish ethnicity, dead by the summer of 1982, in Oakland, California, due to complications from liver disease — is indeed only legend (and the inspiration of the homage below). Her real name may indeed be Roberta Pedon, but she's Italian, was born in 1952 in Venice, and is very much alive today — here's a TV interview in Italian. 

Elias Loeb sings
Roberta

Bang! Bang! The Mafia Gang

(1972, dir. Art Lieberman)

Like so many of the films in which Uschi is found, this movie is available at Porn Tube Classics. We looked at the film in 2013 our R.I.P. Career Review of the great Haji (24 January 1946 – 10 August 2013), where we cobbled the following together:

"Director Art Lieberman only other known credit seems to be as producer of the 1967 'documentary' Something's Happening a.k.a. The Hippie Revolt. This film here is a.k.a. Bang, Bang, the Mafia Gang, The Melon Affair, Heads 'n' Tails and Sex or Bust. 

Trailer to

Something's Happening:

"As is the case with Good Morning and Goodbye! (1967 / scene), in her interview in Shock Cinema Haji calls this movie the favorite of all films she made. She also goes on to explain: 'I was supposed to be Sophia Loren. I played Sophie, an Italian movie star who comes to America because some mobsters kidnapped her father. If Woody Allen had directed it and played the leading man, it would've been a superb film. It was a cheap film, and the director had never made a film before in his life. When I broke down the script, I found out I had something like six different parts in flashback that I had to play, from different parts of the world and different eras. I went to the wardrobe department, and they were yawning and saying, "Yeah, well, we got this and that." I wasn't happy with what I saw, so I said, "Never mind, I'm gonna do my own clothes." They never could've made my character as strong as she was, not with what they had. I really had to bring a lot to it. And then the title was changed to Up Your Alley and it was sold as a sex film. [...] Lowlife men who have no taste — they get hold of a film like that and they don't know what to do with it. These are the men who have their brains in their penises. That film went from one lowlife man to another, instead of going to someone with a little class and taste. It's a cute, funny little film.'

"Temple of Schlock adds the details: 'Rated X by the MPAA in 1970, Art Lieberman's wacky sex comedy Bang Bang, the Mafia Gang — starring funny guy Frank Corsentino in full Woody Allen mode and exotic Russ Meyer starlet Haji in sexy-as-ever mode — was released by Headliner and had its world premiere in Tucson with the stars in attendance. A year later the movie was picked up by Group 1, cut for an MPAA-approved R rating and re-released as Up Your Alley. It toured drive-ins and neighborhood theaters for 5 years under this handle before being sold off to producer/showman M.A. Ripps (of Poor White Trash [1961 / opening credits] infamy), who re-titled it Heads 'n' Tails ("Their tails are up, their heads are down, they're the most popular girls in town!") and finally The Melon Affair for a 1978/1979 roll-out through his EMC Film Corporation. The movie is currently available on DVD-R and for download from Something Weird under its original title.'

"BFI sort of offers a plot: 'Wanting to sell stolen jewels to an American crime syndicate, Sicilian mafia boss, Don Marco (Charles Knapp of The Dark Backwards [1991 / trailer]) flies to the States in disguise. He dies before the deal is completed and Maria (Haji) persuades Seymour (Frank Corsentino) to pose as Marco in order to save her step-father who is held hostage by Marco's contacts.' The movie also features an appearance of the legendary Uschi Digard as the nurse in a fantasy of Seymour. A non-embeddable trailer to the film can be found here at Something Weird... Haji never looked better."

Most of the images here were taken from the all-knowing The Temple of Schlock, which is a temple truly worth going to…

The advertisement above, for the long-gone Twin Drive-In of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, is another prime illustration of the fact that all women like to look at the impressive dicks of strange men. At the Twin, The Melon Affair was part of a triple feature with the Italian sex comedy La moglie vergine a.k.a. At Last, at Last a.k.a. The Virgin Wife (1975 / full movie) and the Southern B-film drama All the Young Wives a.k.a. Naked Rider (1973 / full movie). 

Trailer to

Naked Rider:

The Dirt Gang

(1972, dir. Jerry Jameson)

Uschi Digard, uncredited, appears as "Nude Gang Member with Blue Jeans at Orgy." She not around a lot — but she surely makes an impression.

Director Jerry Jameson had already begun his still-successful career in television by the time he made his first exploitation film in 1971, a sleazy little flick called Brute Corps, which the James Jameson: The Accidental Auterist describes as a "sleaze classic featuring a group of emotionally, sexually, psychologically stunted mercenaries who get easily derailed by an attractive hippie girl who they decide to terrorize, torture and rape. All the Jameson earmarks are here showcasing uninhibited performances by the late great Michael Pataki, Paul Carr, Alex Rocco and Charles Macaulay. [...] Safe to say these four gentlemen carved quite a niche for themselves with all-out iconic performances in exploitation and made-for-TV movies in the 1970s. This film is a powerful introduction to their collective abilities."

 

Trailer to

Brute Corps:

His next film, The Dirt Game, was released by AIP the next year. It is dismissed by TV Guide as a "sleazy biker film from the exploitation mill at AIP. One of the last examples of a genre that had outlived its time."

To return to James Jameson: The Accidental Auterist, the writer there, on the other hand, likes the movie and raves that it is an "outrageous follow-up to Brute Corps with Carr, Pataki and Macaulay all reunited as a deeply depraved motorcycle gang (they drive dirt bikes…) that terrorize a film crew shooting a western in a desert ghost town. Carr is genius as the bi-sexual, one-eyed gang leader (complete with sparkly gold eye patch). I love how all the little character intimacies are developed and dovetail and trickle down to the insane climax. Not your average 'fuck the establishment' biker movie. Without giving too much away, I'd safely call this a cross between Born Losers (1968 / trailer) and The Last Movie (1971 / trailer)."

The Dirt Gang

 radio advertisement:

The flick was written by Michael C. Healy & William Mercer, neither of whom seems to have ever done anything else. Jameson's last movie release was the overtly serious Captive (2015 / trailer), while other feature-film "highlights" include Bat People (1974 / trailer) and Airport '77 (1977 / trailer), one of the cheesiest of a cheesy franchise. But perhaps is his true masterpiece in a TV movie starring a then washed-up kiddy star named Kurt Russell, entitled The Deadly Tower (1975 / clip).

Every 70s Movie tends to agree more with TV Guide, and but makes the movie sound good even as they bitch, "More biker-flick trash about brawling, debauchery, and rape, The Dirt Gang presents all the clichés of a low-rent genre without any of the redeeming values found in the genre's best pictures. Set to crappy, horn-driven rock music that sounds like it was recorded in 1962, rather than a decade later, The Dirt Gang depicts the violence that occurs when a group of bikers stumbles onto a movie company shooting in a western ghost town. Initially hassling the Hollywood folks for free food, the bikers then hold the movie company hostage, raping every woman in sight and beating the tar out of the one tough guy who dares to rebel against the bikers. [...] Performances in The Dirt Gang range from serviceable to substandard. Sporting an eyepatch, Paul Carr (1 Feb 1934 – 17 Feb 2006) invests the role of gang leader Monk with forgettable menace. Playing a loutish biker with a taste for parading around in his tighty-whiteys, B-movie stalwart Michael Pataki (16 Jan 1938 – 15 April 2010) offers his usual mixture of growled vulgarities and silly movie-star impressions. Nominal leading man Michael Forest, as the tough guy, provides little except an imposing physique, although Jo Anne Meredith (17 Nov 1932 – 15 Feb 2001) — playing the aging actress who employs her wiles for self-preservation — conveys an enjoyable hint of cynicism before her role becomes mere eye candy during a long nude scene. Fitting its title, The Dirt Gang is grungy enough to make the viewer want a shower." 

A cover version of a song from the movie

by Space Probe Taurus:

Michael Forest, still alive, has a long and active career in Europe and elsewhere as a character actor, with too many interesting movies to list. Jo Anne Meredith short career included the fun The Psycho Lover (1970 / trailer) and J.D.'s Revenge (1976 / trailer), while Michael Pataki is fun in many fun films, but only directed two, directed Mansion of the Doomed (1976 / trailer) & Cinderella (1977 / trailer).

Prison Girls

(1972, dir. Tom De Simone)
 

Ah! Tom De Simone! A.k.a. Lancer Brooks, the director of the hardcore gay classics, "The Idol (1979 / trailer) and Heavy Equipment (1977, in 3-D and featuring both Al Parker [25 June 1952 – 17 Aug 1992] and Jack Wrangler [11 July 1946 – 7 April 2009], two icons of the Golden Age of gay porn, as well as the legendary Christy Twins)."

 

We took a closer look at De Simone — and took a literal look at both Parker's and Wrangler's impressive assets — in our review of the Linda Blair vehicle Hell Night (1981), which De Simone directed. (Note: deliciously large salami found at that review.) De Simone used to have an interesting blog/website, but it seems to have disappeared. Still alive, but inactive, he was/is a talented director with many an exploitation fave to his name, including the legendary Chatterbox (1977 / trailer).

Originally released in 3-D, Prison Girls, an AIP production, is the first of a total of three "women-in-prison" movies De Simone was to direct over the course of his career. It was later followed by two sleaze "classics", The Concrete Jungle (1982 / trailer) and Reform School Girls (1986 / trailer). (In truth, Prison Girls is more a "woman out of prison" movie, as it tells what happens to the various girls while they are on prison furlough.)

When talking about the three films at Love It Loud, De Simone dismissively says "Prison Girls was a disaster from the start and I have no good things at all to say about that film. It was an accident that I even ended up directing and I didn't like anything connected to that project. Concrete Jungle was a bit more professional than the other, but of the three, Reform School Girls is my favorite and by comparison I think it's the one film that best showcases my talent and is closest to my original vision and sensibilities."

That said, Prison Girls nevertheless does have Uschi Digard (as Cindy), not to mention Barbara Mills, Candy Samples, Neola Graef, Marsha Jordan, Jacqueline Giroux and a variety of other popular (and now mostly forgotten) skin starlets of the day. Plus, as Video Junkie points out, Prison Girls is "to date the only W.I.P. (women-in-prison) shot in 3-D and somehow I doubt anyone will be tackling this subject matter in this new 3-D era." They go on to say, "Prison Girls definitely is one of a kind. No doubt influenced by the softcore 3-D box office success The Stewardesses (1969 / trailer), this one takes the skin flick subgenre and runs with it. There is so much flesh on display that it almost seems like a hardcore flick with the X-rated shots cut out. It shouldn't surprise anyone that the filmmakers and actors have a history in the porn industry. Unfortunately, with a few exceptions, it is 70s ugly flesh that will kill the thrill. Naturally, the amateurish acting is an asset here as well. [...] Without the benefit of seeing this in 3-D, Prison Girls is pretty grim stuff. The opening credits unfold over stock footage of older black-and-white W.I.P. flicks* with some of the most haggard ladies on display. And even though there is a ton of unclad skin on screen, the film itself is actually depressing as nearly every girl suffers some horrible indignity to remind us that it is 'a cold, cruel world' out there. The last 3 minutes tries to put a moral slant on it all, but it is too little, too late. Here is the final anti-establishment bit where a prisoner turns the tables on the psychologist (who looks like Harry Shearer in a wig). Take that, old lady!"
* According to imdb, John Cromwell's Caged (1950 / trailer).

 

Final scene of

Prison Girls:

The "plot"? Rock! Pop! Shock! says, "The story, such as it is, opens with a shower scene in a prison where a woman named Gertie (Annik Borel) tries to fool around with inmate Cindy (Uschi Digard — who doesn't seem to be dubbed, for once). It doesn't go as planned with a few other inmates show up and they talk about how they're all getting a weekend pass that will let them out into the real world, thanks to Dr. Reinhardt [...]. From there, the girls split the prison [...] to go out and reconnect with husbands and boyfriends for a series of sex scenes that don't really further the plot much at all. Lots of group gropes happen, at one point there's a body painting scene with Candy Samples in it, yeah… mostly people have sex. It's not hardcore, at least not in this version, but it comes close at times. Uschi sports some white go-go boots and fucks a guy who looks like an MC5 roadie on a couch. As each of the female characters reconnects with a man from her past, bad shit happens — one gets beaten, one gets raped, one gets into it with a cell mate and, well, poor Cindy [Uschi]? We won't spoil that but you won't see it coming. [...] For the most part, this is goofy, sleazy bumping and grinding. No more, no less. Light on plot, the movie is entertaining enough thanks to the fact that it is pretty much chock full of softcore sex with some attractive and noteworthy actresses. [...] This was clearly shot fast and cheap, there's very little in the way of production values to discuss, the locations are unimpressive and the whole thing looks grubby. But then, there's the appeal of something like this."

Though we are not 100% sure it's the same movie, we would offer the hypothesis (based on the poster further above) that Prison Girls got released somewhere along the line as "Prison Girls" Conjugal Experiment, which was at least screened in Florida on a double feature with Wife Exchange Club; the oddly cut ad below is for a 1975 screening there at the Showtown II of the Showtown Twin Drive-In in Fort Walton Beach.

We assume, without evidence, that Wife Exchange Club is probably the 1969 German comedy, Ehepaar sucht gleichgesinntes a.k.a. Swedish Wife Exchange Club, from Germany's Franz Josef Gottlieb (1 Nov 1930 – 23 July 2006), the director of a lot of crap and some trashy and/or fun films like Lady Dracula (1977 / trailer below) and The Black Abbot (1963). 

German trailer to

Lady Dracula (1977):

Where Does It Hurt?

(1972, writ. & dir. Rod Amateau)

"This is a true story. Only the names have been changed to avoid lawsuits. No reference to the American Medical Association or any of its members is intended. In fact, this film is dedicated to the honest, sincere MDs whose lives are devoted to the sacred Hippocratic Oath. Will those three doctors please stand up?"

 

Supposedly based a 1970 novel The Operator by Rod Amateau and Budd Robinson, the title was changed to Where Does It Hurt? for the movie release. If you manage to see Uschi in this obscure mainstream anti-establishment comedy, you have good eyes: she appears uncredited as a girl at a party. (It is the second Peter Sellers movie in which she is a face in the party crowd; the first was I Love You Alice B. Toklas [1968, see Part I].)

 

A few minutes of

Where Does It Hurt?:

Director Rod Amateau (20 Dec 1923 – 29 June 2003) was primarily active on television, but every once and a while he would make a feature film comedy like this one and/or the forgotten Son of Hitler (1979), The Seniors (1978 / full film), Drive-In (1976 / trailer), the embarrassment that is The Statue (1971 / trailer), and the unneeded sequel to 1965's [now badly dated] What's New Pussycat? (trailer), Pussycat, Pussycat — I Love You (1970 / trailer). But the true highpoint of his career a 1987 release that he directed, produced, and co-wrote: The Garbage Pail Kids Movie, an absolutely terrible film that is truly great as only absolutely terrible film can be. 

Trailer to

The Garbage Pail Kids Movie:

TV Guide gives Where Does It Hurt? one star and seethes, "The film slanders nearly every ethnic minority at one time or another. The language is profane, the proceedings inane, and the story insane. True, the film has a few laughs, but not enough to make up for the appalling lack of taste. [...] If you hate doctors, Mexicans, homosexuals, blacks, females, Catholics, Jews, Italians, Japanese, insurance companies, hospitals, Poles, and humanity, you'll love this movie." (It is, in other words, a movie for the Trump Generation and the contemporary Republican.)

At All Movie, Clarke Fountain has the plot: "Where Does It Hurt? is a hospital comedy which is carefully designed to leave no interest group unoffended. In the broadest of broad comic manners, it recounts its tale of greed, ignorance and corruption in the medical profession. Dr. Albert T. Hopfnagel (Peter Sellers), a hospital administrator, is a doctor who is expert in the arts of bill-padding, unnecessary surgery, and kickbacks. His assistant (Jo Ann Pflug) has finally had enough of his destructive and dishonest shenanigans and gets him sent to prison. He is released a little too soon for comfort, however."

At Scopophilia, Richard Winters, who gives the film "4 out of 10 stars", ponders about the injustices of life: "It's funny how names like Ed Wood Jr. or Tommy Wiseau get mentioned in just about anyone's list of bad movie directors, but Rod Amateau's never does, but should. Not only did he produce My Mother the Car (1965-66 / theme song) and Supertrain (1979 / credits), which are considered two of the worst TV-series ever to be broadcast, but he also directed the notorious Garbage Pail Kids as well as Son of Hitler and The Statue, which featured a jealous David Niven going around the bathrooms and gay bathhouses of London looking for a man whose penis matches the one that his wife created for a life-sized statue that she says replicates her lover's. While this film isn't quite as bad as those it comes close."

Where Does It Hurt?

 in 13 minutes:

Fuzz

(1972, dir. Richard A. Colla)

The artist of the above poster obviously couldn't resist the homage to Burt Reynolds' famous but extremely coy layout in Cosmo, seen below. (If you want to see a less coy photo of co-star Yul Brynner in his youth, we suggest looking at R.I.P.: Umberto Lenzi, Part V: 1976-82.) As for Uschi Digard, to say that she is in this Boston-set movie is almost a joke: she is supposedly seen briefly on a loop watched somewhere in the course of the movie.

Still, how can we not take advantage of the opportunity to take a look at the movie that is credited as the feature-film debut of Babe of Yesteryear Tamara Dobson (14 May 1947 – 2 Oct 2006), better known as Cleopatra Jones (1973)? (She was actually found earlier in Come Back Charleston Blue [1972 / trailer], but isn't credited.) Also, by looking at Fuzz we once again have an excuse to present one of our favorite clips featuring Raquel Welch, namely the one directly below. 

Space-Girl Dance:

Fuzz is one of but only five feature films directed by TV man Richard A. Colla. An "action comedy", at one point Brian De Palma was set to direct, but he bailed. The script was based on one of Ed McBain's 87^th Precinct books, and indeed, "Ed McBain", aka as Evan Hunter, wrote the script. The setting, for whatever reason, was moved from New York to Boston.

 

The plot, as supplied by Jedadiah Leland at Through the Shattered Lens: "Detective Eileen McHenry (Raquel Welch) has just been given her new assignment and she is about to find out that there is never a dull day in the 87th Precinct. How could there be when the precinct's top detectives are played by Burt Reynolds [Det. Carella], Tom Skerritt [Det. Kling], and Jack Weston [Det. Meyer]? Or when Boston's top criminal mastermind is played by Yul Brynner [The Deaf Man]? There is always something happening in the 87th Precinct. Someone is stealing stuff from the precinct house. Someone else is attacking the city's homeless. Even worse, Brynner is assassinating public officials and will not stop until he is paid a hefty ransom!"

Video Vacuum calls Fuzz a "meandering action comedy", complaining that the "plot threads inexplicably merge during the highly unlikely and poorly edited finale that relies heavily on not only incredible coincidence, but sheer stupidity as well."

Something that Donald Guarisco, at All Movie, seems to agree with: "This odd fusion of cop thriller and black comedy attempts to do for the cop movie what M.A.S.H. (1970 / trailer) did for the war movie, but lacks the consistency and inspiration to reach this lofty aim. The key problem with Fuzz is its script, which never strikes a comfortable balance between its darkly humorous criticism of police and state government and its often brutal action film elements. It is also wildly overplotted, meaning the characters never get any room to breathe and interesting subplots (like Burt Reynolds' relationship with his deaf-mute wife) often go nowhere. Richard A. Colla's direction keeps the story rolling at a fast clip, but often leans on the film's comedy elements in heavy-handed fashion that makes potential gags abrasive instead of amusing. [...] In the end, Fuzz is too muddled and inconsistent to rate as anything more than an interesting curio."

Also, as Trailers from Hell points out, "Stars Burt Reynolds and Raquel Welch have zero chemistry as they feuded throughout." Commentary below is supplied by Josh Olson, "the only student in his second-grade class to see The House That Dripped Blood (1971 / trailer). Many years later, he wrote and directed the no-budget horror film, Infested (2002)." 

Trailer to

Fuzz:

Hollywood Babylon

(1972 dir. Van Guylder)

"[Joe] Van Guylder" is an oft-used pseudonym of Edward J. Forsyth (2 June 1920 – 29 Aug 2004), a man who made a variety sleaze flick in his day. The title and content of this film were lifted by scriptwriter/producer "L.K. Farbella" from Kenneth Anger's fun but often factually inaccurate book, cover below. (Two years previously, in 1970, "L.K. Farbella" wrote and produced The Tale of the Dean's Wife [full NSFW movie], his or her only other known credit.) Uschi is found twice in HB: somewhere as a party girl, and elsewhere as Marlene Dietrich. (In the latter case, that's some pretty odd casting.)

The film is available at Something Weird, where John Harrison writes, "One wonders what Kenneth Anger thought of this cheapjack [...] bastardization of his famous tome, if indeed he's even aware that it exists. Hollywood Babylon follows the path of Anger's book almost to the letter, with each 'chapter' taking the form of a staged vignette, and tied together by tinted newsreel footage and old silent film clips. The first scandal on our tour of Sin City is that of [Vargas Girl] Olive Thomas [drawing below], popular silent star who, in 1920, swallowed a fatal dose of mercury granules in her Paris hotel room. [...] In the staged footage, we get to see one of [Mary] Pickford's debauched parties, where guests smoke opium and get their gear off for an orgy [...]. Things proceed to get even more exciting with stories about movie star addict Wallace Reid (accompanied by a nude poolside orgy [...]), followed by Valentino voyeuristically watching lesbians writhing on his bed, Uschi Digard playing none other than a butch Marlene Dietrich (discovered in a German music hall doing a lesbo act [...]), and the infamous Roscoe 'Fatty' Arbuckle scandal. In this film, Arbuckle grabs doomed starlet Virginia Rappe (portrayed as an insatiable nympho) and ruptures her insides while pleasuring her with a champagne bottle. The most outrageous reenactment depicts the love triangle between William Randolph Hearst, Marion Davies, and Charlie Chaplin. No names are ever mentioned, and all the events are only 'alleged' to have happened, but mention is made of Chaplin's rumored 'organs of equine proportions'. We see Hearst killing producer Thomas H. Ince aboard his ship, then manipulating the newspapers so they all report Ince's death as acute indigestion! Other sights for you to savor include: Charlie Chaplin trying to convince his sixteen-year-old wife of the joys of fellatio; Clara Bow taking on the members of a football team [...]; Eric Von Stroheim filming one of his 'orgiastic classics' and enjoying a gal getting whipped at his home ..."

The Spinning Image basically dismisses the movie, saying "All those suspicions may or may not have been true (though it is doubtful that at least half the stuff in Anger's tome was), but if it sounded like a good story, it was worth repeating. This documentary was an unofficial version of the text, a cash-in that mixed acres of stock footage with re-enactments of what had been supposed by Anger on the page, and though he had plenty of photographs to illustrate the salacious rumors and on the record facts, none of these were to be seen here. Mostly you got a bunch of skinflick performers ('The beautiful people of Hollywood!' according to the credits) dressing up in vintage clothes, or more often taking them off, and acting out what may or may not have occurred."

At All Movie, Clarke Fountain lambasts the movie and says, "Though it purports to be a documentary/docudrama based on filmmaker Kenneth Anger's book Hollywood Babylon, it uses the book's theme — scandals in the early Hollywood era — as a takeoff point for making a softcore porn film. That in itself would not be cause for particular disgust. What arouses professional scorn is that it rehashes nearly every salacious rumor ever heard in Hollywood from the 1920s to the '70s. Even that, perhaps, might not have so deeply offended [...], if it were not so clear that the makers of this film had money-grubbing rather than honest muckraking in mind. As it stands, the movie violates just about every ethical standard going, without actually breaking the law. Abounding in simulated sex with unknown actors standing in for their famous counterparts, it has a certain stomach-churning fascination."

To distill all that said above about the movie into one sentence: Hollywood Babylon is good, dirty exploitation fun. The 1972 softcore porn version can be found all over the web, like here at the very hardcore Tube Porn Classic website.

As "Van Guylder", Edward J. Forsyth also directed the infamous western, The Ramrodder (1969), "an adult western that's part nudie-cutie, part violent 'roughie' […,] notorious for its connection to Charles Manson as well as its lurid sado-masochistic whipping scene with Kathy Williams. […] Filmed partly at Spahn Ranch where Charles Manson's 'family' lived, including Catherine Share — who plays an Indian maiden. Manson's friend Bobby Beausoleil also appears as an Indian. In August 1969, Beausoleil was arrested for stabbing a man to death over a drug deal dispute. A few days later, Manson had his followers commit a series of 'copycat' crimes (the infamous Sharon Tate & LaBianca murders) in large part to make it look like Beausoleil was innocent. […] [Internet Archives]" 

Trailer to 

The Ramrodder:

Blood Sabbath

(1972, dir. Brianne Murphy)
 

Brianne Murphy (1 April 1933 – 20 Aug 2003) caught our attention years ago in Bloodlust! (1961): at the time married to the director, Ralph Brooke (22 May 1920 – 4 Dec 1963), she played the dead babe floating in the tank. Four years earlier, in 1959, she also played Pam, one of teenagers of Teenage Zombies (1959) — some sources say she was likewise married to the movie's director, the immensely untalented Z-film director Jerry Warren (10 March 1925 – 21 August 1988). Normally a cinematographer, she only directed two feature films: this one, and To Die, to Sleep (1994 / trailer), a Charles Napier movie we didn't look at in his RIP Career Review.

Les Baxter's music to

Blood Sabbath:

Terror Titan, which laments that "Blood Sabbath is another one of those movies I really wish I could like more", has the plot: "A Viet Nam vet (Anthony Geary of Night Life [1989 / trailer]) haunted by the war, meets and falls in love with a water nymph (Susan Damante of Bloodparty aka Home Sweet Home [1981 / trailer]) in an isolated stretch of back country. Desperate to make this impossible relationship work, he sells his soul to the evil leader of a local witch coven (Dyanne Thorne) for the promise of being able to be with his beloved. Perhaps this is stating the obvious, but it all ends very badly."

The Full Movie:

Over at Letterboxd, some guy named Jason M calls the movie a "Dopey, but entertaining piece of independent American filmmaking. Mixing fantasy, horror, sexploitation (well, what did you expect from a movie with Dyanne Thorne and a bunch of witches? — An uncredited Uschi Digard amongst them!) and in a way, H. C. Andersen's fairy-tale of The Little Mermaid in a sticky mixture that gets the job done — if you're in the mood for cheesy backyard filmmaking, poor acting and quick-fix solutions. With that said, theirs is actually one great storytelling tool in use here. The Crown Jewel — guilt! A subplot concerning child sacrifices and David's guilt over what he's done in Vietnam drive him to the decisions he makes and the path the story takes."

Dave Sindelar at Fantastic Movie Musing and Ramblings adds, "You know, I really can't help but admire a movie that really tries to be different. Of course, that doesn't mean the movie will work, and this bizarre cross between seventies witch movies, Night Tide (1961 / trailer), Love Story (1970 / trailer) and Orgy of the Dead (1965 / trailer), with romantic meadow-romping, tepid gore effects, crass exploitation (it really should be called 'Boob Sabbath', if you get my drift) and bad acting is, in a word, awful. [...] Incidentally, did you know the way you lose your soul involves being caressed by a coven of naked witches? Sure, it sounds like fun, all right, but based on Geary's performance, I can only come to the conclusion that it really hurts. Granted, I've never been in a position to try it myself…"

Video Vacuum gets straight to chase about the movie really is about, saying, "Goddamn there are so many titties in this movie it'll make your head spin. I don't do Breast Counts in my reviews, but I'm sure even someone as experienced as say, Joe Bob Briggs is at counting boobs would have a tough time tallying all the tits in this movie; they bounce around so fast and furiously. I mean you've got to love any movie where the gal wearing a belly chain is the overdressed one. And if you're a fan of 70's bush, you're going to need a weed whacker to wade through it all."

Doctor Feelgood

(1972 dir. Robert M. Mansfield)

 

It is open to discussion whether Doctor Feelgood was released in 1972 or 1974, and whether Uschi really plays Nurse Nelly Nesbit. More than one website lists this movie on Uschi Digard's filmography, as does Uschi herself at her website. We doubt it, personally, but back in 2013, we even briefly refer to her when we looked at this movie years ago in R.I.P.: Harry Reems, Part III (1973-74), where we cobbled together the following:

"Aka Dr Feelgood's Sex Clinic. Harry Reems and 'Inger Kissin' (otherwise known as Andrea True) are the big names on the posters of this movie, a movie about which virtually nothing can be found online. Check your attic, as we would assume this movie to be lost. We did find one mention on page 113 of Vol. 27 of John Willis' Screen World (1976); it offers no plot description, but reveals that the film was 'presented' by forgotten exploitation producer Allan Shackleton. 

Andrea True Connection,

More More More:

In regard to the double feature advertised here left, in a copy of the Ottowa Citizen from Feb 1, 1978, Charles Gordon rather surrealistically says in his article Time again for a review of available smut that 'It is difficult to know how to compare these two. Each employs a unique mis-en-scene but she gets shot fatally in the tummy in the first one. In the second, she survives and painfully relearns how to water-ski, only to die of pneumonia after catching a chill during the burning of Atlanta and forgetting that she never had to say she was sorry.' Another website has Uschi Digard listed as participating in the film, something neither John Willis nor any poster confirms. We would assume that this film is probably a 'comedy' for the raincoat crowd that tries to ride of Reems's then-famous persona as the 'doctor' that found Lovelace's clit in her throat..."

Still, we have to admit we must wonder how a West Coast softcore starlet like Uschi ended up in an East Coast hardcore sex film. Producer Allan Shackleton is, of course, infamous for having taken an inconsequential and unreleased Michael and Roberta Findlay film shot in Argentina, Slaughter (1972), and, after adding some new material, releasing a movie that gained instant and immortal notoriety, Snuff (1976 / trailer) — "Shot in South America… Where life is CHEAP!"

Doctor Feelgood, obviously a comedy, was incongruently paired at one point with the Italian exploiter Io cristiana studentessa degli scandali a.k.a. School of Erotic Enjoyment, directed by Italo sleazemonger Sergio Bergonzelli (25 Aug 1924 – 24 Sept 2002), best known for Nelle pieghe della carne a.k.a. In the Folds of the Flesh (1970 / trailer below). 

Trailer to

In the Folds of the Flesh (1970):

In regards to School of Erotic Enjoyment, at the imdb lazarillo says, "[…] This is one of those Italian movies, like Ferdinand DiLeo's Being Twenty (1978 / trailer) or a lot of Joe D'Amato's 70's films, that will really give you a case of cinematic whiplash because it veers from frothy light-hearted sex comedy to brutal seriousness (like a vicious gang-rape scene). The acting is all okay, but the most impressive performance is probably given by [Malisa] Longo's incredible breasts, which get A LOT of screen time and really deliver a tour de force performance […]". 
Longo's breasts are also found in The Red Monks (1988) and Salon Kitty (1976).

  

The Goddaughter

(1972, dir. Donn Greer)

(Nunsploitation! Sorta…) The "John Donne" who wrote the script is supposedly aka Donn Greer; Donne/Greer made a variety of forgotten and non-memorable films, but Alice in Acidland (1969 / acid trip and nudity below) enjoys slight fame, if only for the great title. 

20 minutes of

Alice in Acidland (1969):

Donn Greer disappeared after helping produce Greydon Clark's typically terrible Angels' Brigade (1979 / trailer), only to reappear to do the art direction to Greydon Clark's typically terrible Joysticks (1983 / trailer) — assuming it's the same Donn Greer, "art direction" is where he started: his first known credit is for that in the driver's education short, Anatomy of an Accident (1961).

Full short —

 Anatomy of an Accident (1961):

Little known fact: Donn Greer (below)  is the brother of the far more famous actress, Jane Greer (9 Sept 1924 – 24 Aug 2001) [LA Times], whom most film fans know from the classic film noir, Out of the Past (1947 / trailer). In fact, according to what is said here at YouTube, in the drama The Company She Keeps (1951 / let's smoke), "The director [John Cromwell (23 Dec 1886 – 26 Sept 1979)] thought it would be amusing to shoot a scene where Jane Greer's FRATERNAL TWIN BROTHER Donn Greer, tries to pick up on his real life sister (Jane)."

Uschi, credited as "Heidi Sohler", plays Bertha from the Bronx. Needless to say, The Goddaughter is a direct play upon a somewhat more famous movie, The Godfather (1972 / trailer).

Women in Prison Films has a plot description: "The Godfather (Alan Sinclair) is a 'sissy', and the Mob bumps him off. Since the old man has already passed away, his daughter, 'Sonny' Carrione (Diana Hardy) and Tommie Fagan (John Paul Jones), the Consigliori, of the Family, must find a replacement! It is then that the Enforcer Lucy Brassiere (Dimitri Roxoff), remembers the old Godfather, Don Carlos, had mentioned a child named Tony, born out of wedlock and left with an old Priest, in a monastery in Sardinia. They send for Tony and set up a meeting with the rival Dons, in their newly acquired Strip Hotel in Las Vegas, to meet the new Godfather. There's just one problem: the new 'Godfather' arrives in a nun's habit — and her name is Toni (Tracy Handfuss), and she is truly one of the God's daughters!"

At Something Weird, Prince Pervo explains the fun of the film: "Uschi Digard happily murders a man by smothering his face in her tits. She also starts to have sex with another guy when he squeezes her right boob and — Pow! — it explodes with a puff of smoke and the guy is shot in the head! But wait, wait, there's more.... A gal named Babe Piranha (!) has a mouth full of vampire-like teeth (!!), and her specialty is, of course, chomping off dicks (!!!).... Best of all, Kathy Hilton shoots bullets from her vagina! Honest. [...] And that's just some of the twisted joys on display in The Goddaughter, a surprisingly obscure sex film considering the cast, violence, and sick jokes..." 

Finally! A film that sounds truly entertaining.
  

The Orgy Machine

 (1972, dir. Unknown)

 

At one point or another, when released as The Incredible Sex-Ray Machine, it had a nice poster — the artist as unknown as the movie's "director". In the end, it is hardly surprising that the director of this "movie" is unknown, as the movie is less directed than stitched together. Sure, there is a slim bracketing storyline that threads in and out between the sex scenes, but the "narrative thread" is merely an excuse to cut together archive footage from past films and hardcore loops. Uschi, who pops up as a "sunbather with big breasts" (which get mauled by John Holmes), was of course not originally part of a hardcore scene — but film editors can do wonders. (We would tend to think that those are Uschi's pre-mauled breasts directly below.)

Women in Prison has a plot description that reads like a DVD backcover: "Mad scientist, Verner Von Sperm (William Kirschner) creates the ultimate weapon: The Orgy Machine! With it he can focus on anyone in the world and drive them mad with lust, filling them with such desire for constant sex that they lose control. With thousands of victims in his control like this, he could make a fortune having countries pay him to let their important officials return to a normal life by turning off his orgy machine and releasing them from its clutches. But they didn't count on super-agent John Holmes and his own secret weapon of mass pleasure." (If only Holmes hadn't been so fucking ugly.)

Some years ago, at the Classic Horror Film Board a few guys who had seen the film exchanged notes, one arguing that the unknown director was probably Walt Davis, a.k.a. Mike T. Lawn and David Stefans. To cocktail the highpoints of their exchange: "This early example of hardcore sci-fi porn has a number of interesting facets, even if the production ultimately amounts to little more than a 'loop-carrier' [...]. For one thing, the 'ex-Nazi mad scientist', Werner von Sperm, is clearly a parody of rocket scientist Wernher von Braun. For another, this is one of a handful of porn movies that make use of actual footage of atom bomb tests for its conclusion. [...] The Orgy Machine also very subtly manages to slip in some male-male action, which is quite characteristic of Walt Davis' work from the time [...]. Bill Kirschner is one of those bit-part actors from 'regular movies' (his credits for blink-and-you'll-miss-'em parts take in everything from The Diary of Anne Frank [1959 / trailer] to Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song [1971]) who also maintained a lengthy career playing non-sex parts in adult movies, taking on the lion's share of the required 'acting' in these pictures. He stands out in particular for his succession of mad scientists and crazy doctors at the beginning of the 1970s [...]. The reason for this movie having remained readily available over the decades is due to a single fact: the presence of a youthful John Holmes (also a Walt Davis regular at this time) in the sex footage. [...] The scientist tests it about seven or eight times, so we get lots of footage of people doing stuff." 

First half of our favorite Walt Davis movie —

Evil Come Evil Go (1972):

The Pleasures of a Woman

(1972, dir. "Clem Moser")

Not to be confused with the 1983 hardcore movie, The Private Pleasures of a Woman (aka The Pleasures of a Woman), poster below, which may have been directed by John Seeman (see our review of Hardgore [1974]).

No, Pleasures of a Woman is another movie "directed by the sorely underappreciated and unjustly unknown Z-film filmmaker Nick Millard, otherwise aka 'Nick Phillips' (and Clem Moser, Jan Anders, Max Boll, Joe Davis, Hans Dedow, Hans Delow, Jamie Delvos, Pet Elephant, Bruno Geller, Alan Lindus, Allan Lundus, John Meyer, Philip Miller, Nicholas Milor, Alfredo Nicola, Don Rolos, Helmud Schuyler, Otto Wilmer, and surely more)."

Uschi previously appeared in other one-day wonders he directed, including The Pimp Primer (1970) and Dr. Christina of Sweden (1970), both looked at in Part I, his "masterpiece" Roxanna (1970), looked at in Part II, and Fancy Lady (1971), looked at in Part IV.

Nick Millard is actually the son of an even older and obscurer exploitation film producer and distributor Sam S. Millard, aka Elid Stanch and nicknamed "Steamship", who was active as a producer while exploitation was still learning to walk — see the poster card of Pitfalls of Passion (1927, above) and the advertisement for Scarlet Youth (1928, below),* both "lost" films, below — and movie producer Frances Millard.

* Interesting aside: Corliss Palmer [25 July 1899 – 27 Aug 1952], above, the lead actress of Scarlet Youth, was once deemed the "most beautiful girl in America". She ended her life an alcoholic and died in a mental institute.

Nick Millard's parents not only produced some of his films — his father, early ones like Nick's directorial debut Nudes on Credit (1963 / trailer) and Nympho (1965 / trailer); his mother, later ones like Dr Bloodbath (1986 / film) and Dracula in Vegas (1999 / reviewed) — but according to some websites, when Frances Millard got out of producing movies, Nick showed true filial concern and became her manager when she went into hardcore porn as Granny Gigi and made a bunch of "older woman younger man" fuck-fests. Her first, The Ultimate Granny Gang Bang (2000), had the unforgettable tagline, "84-year-old takes on 84 total inches of hard cock!" (Sounds… thrilling. Not.)

Over at 10K Bullets, Cliff Wood, who calls Pleasures of a Woman a "top-tier example" of its genre, supplies the plot: "The widow of a wealthy man (Uschi Digard) seduces the only person who stands in her way, her deceased's husbands naive niece (Lynn Harris)." He adds, "[...] There is a good balance between the plot and sex scenes, which are all top notch. And while Uschi Digard is the main attraction of this feature, one should not overlook the ample assets of her co-star Lynn Harris. [...]" 

Get comfortable:

Cinesploitation notices the psychological aspect of the movie, in which "there is no dialogue [...], only narration by the young girl", and points out that "there is an inner struggle that goes on inside of the niece because she knows the woman has bad intentions but she can't help giving in to her lesbian desires."

In this sense, Pleasures of a Woman, much like Millard's earlier and trippier film Roxanne, plays the typical "I want my cake and to eat it, too" attitude: sex and drugs abound, but giving into them is shown to lead the innocent to unhappiness and doom. This undermines the slightly post-feminist reading of Millard's film as presented at B-independent: "Pleasures of a Woman is a product of its time. It's a movie about sexual liberation, ancient history in today's world of gay marriages, but for its time I'm sure it was groundbreaking. Sex, drugs, free love. It spoke to the college crowd similarly to the writings of Jack Kerouac or Hunter S. Thompson in that in that it was geared directly towards that specific generation of free thinkers and not their parents or grandparents. Anyone can do stag, that's just screwing, but who else besides Phillips was using women to speak directly to women about sex in 1972?"

So: "Is there a moral in there somewhere? Maybe. If so, it's pretty convoluted and not all together too clear. But Pleasures of a Woman does do a masterful job of combining the erotic with the freaky in a way that died with the decade it was made in. [Rock! Pop! Shock!]" 

The blogspot Dead2Rights adds an interesting plot point: "Neola Graf (aka Neola Graef, Joyce Adams, Malta, Bolivia Tiernan, and Olivia Tiernan) worked frequently with Uschi. In Nick Millard's The Pleasures of a Woman, Neola is the girl that Lynn Harris fantasizes about as she fucks Uschi."

In 2002, as he did with Millard's Roxanna that same year, director Ted W. Crestview made his own 36-minute video version of the movie, also entitled Pleasures of a Woman. Befitting the time the remake was made, the massive mounds of the largest-breasted woman, played by Syn DeVil, are massively immobile and look typically economically-priced. Michael Raso went on to do a feature-length softcore remake in 2004, entitled The Seduction of Misty Mundae (trailer). 

Produced by Nick Millard's dad —

Excerpt from SS Millard's Is Your Daughter Safe? (1927):

 

Sex Pursuits

(1972, dir. Kemal Horulu)

The director of this loop carrier is actually not given in the original credits, but as it was released by Kemal Horulu's production company Kemal Enterprises, Horulu, who indeed did direct a number of movies in his day, is generally credited. If there was ever an original poster, it hasn't found its way onto the web, so here are some posters to other Horulu films instead.

 

As we mentioned at R.I.P.: Harry Reems — Part II (1969-1972), where we took a quick look at Horulu's All About Sex of All Nations (1971), some websites (like here at Distribpix) claim that porn purveyor Karl Hansen (dir. of the white-coater Sexual Practices in Sweden [1970]) went on to become Kemal Horulu; we have our doubts, but who are we to say it ain't so?

Though released by Alpha Blue some years ago as one of the three films on their DVD Uschi Digard Triple Feature #3, nary a word has been written about the mostly hairy and hardcore hand-helper... but for the words of that great porn peeper lor_ at the imdb. Calling it "a who's who of early '70s porn actresses", he found it nevertheless "a routine loop carrier": "Narrator tells us about modern sexual freedom, and we're treated to examples, beginning with XXX '69' on the beach. Sexy girls dance to a bongo beat, and Sandy Carey is introduced as a fortune teller playing an organ (more the Hammond kind). Gap-toothed Terri Johnson is her customer at the crystal ball. While Donovan's Sunshine Superman plays, she shows Terri first a soft-core, then a hardcore loop in which a very big dick receives a blow job. William Howard [...] is in the next soft-core loop. After another stag film, Sandy finally gets involved, in lesbian action, cross cut with the stag footage, all while soporific organ music plays. Individual stars like Uschi Digard don't get a chance to shine, but as an omnibus credit for half a dozen top names from the soft-to-hard transition period this has historical value." 

Donovan's

Sunshine Superman:

Years ago in 2012, at the blogspot En lejemorder ser tilbage, Anonymous wrote "Kemal Horulu was my uncle he lived in the US in the 70-90s where he was a producer of soft porn and some short films for national geographic if anyone needs more info on him you can email me james90210@me.com." Anyone want to write him? And maybe find out if Horulu was ever the Nordic-sounding director "Karl Hansen"?

  

Girls on the Road

(1972, dir. Thomas J. Schmidt) 
 

"God, I'm 17 and I haven't even been felt up yet!"

Originally released as Hot Summer Week, as Temple of Schlock knows. Uschi, un-credited, is seen in this movie during the credit sequence not as a beach girl, but the beach girl. Wow. You do indeed see her, however, looking tanned and splendid in her bikini.

In their review, Temple of Schlock really hates the movie: find out why here. You'll also find out there that the script is based, without credit, on "a story by British writer Dail Ambler (11 Jan 1925 – 6 Sept 74) and originally titled Happening". Dail Ambler, little did we know, is a vintage author appreciated by those in the know.

Trailer to

Girls on the Road:

As far as we can tell, this is both the directorial debut and only feature film of Thomas J. Schmidt (14 Aug 1939 – 5 May 1975), though had he not died so young perhaps he might have made more: he was, after all, a successful assistant director.

A mildly more familiar name is the movie's main producer Joe Solomon, who has a roughly ten-year-long successful career as a producer of exploitation films ranging from biker films (Hells Angels on Wheels [1967]) to Blaxploitation (Top of the Heap [1972 / trailer]) to horror (The Tower of Evil [1972 / trailer, with Jill Haworth]) to comedy (The Gay Deceivers [1969 / trailer]) to biker horror (Werewolves on Wheels [1971 / trailer]) to biker war (The Losers [1970 / trailer]) and more. All we can ask is, seriously: Where did you go, Joe?

Joe was a specialist in trash cinema, and this production, while not his most successful on any level, is an example of his normal product. As such, as 10K Bullets points out, "Ultimately this is a nostalgic time capsule of 70s' drive-in fun; it's well-paced and kept me fairly entertained over its relatively short runtime."

At All Movie, Robert Firsching has the plot: "Thomas J. Schmidt directed this little-known exploitation film [...]. After an unusual credit sequence featuring busty cult starlet Uschi Digart, the film follows the story of two girls (Kathleen Cody and Diane Hull [the latter of Christmas Evil (1980)]) on their way to a hippie encounter session run by Ralph Waite (of Crash and Burn [1990 / trailer]). They pick up a crazed Vietnam veteran (Michael Ontkean of Necromancy [1972]) who has grainy flashbacks in both black & white and distorted color, aside from having a bipolar mood disorder. He might just be the serial killer who is murdering hippies in Waite's peaceful village by the ocean..."

Oh the Horror muses, "If there was ever a contradictory time in history, it was the late 60s and early 70s. On the one hand, the youth and hippie movements preached free love and quality; on the other, the horrors of the Vietnam War and the various political assassinations of the era introduced a nihilistic and jaded perspective. These two warring world views would often cross cinematic paths and clash with violent results. Horror often provided a natural breeding ground for the conflict, which had one of its bloodiest battles in a quaint Last House on the Left (1972 / trailer below). Schlock producer Joe Solomon saw an obvious market in the growing youth counterculture, and he produced a string of low budget cult films that featured everything from killer bikers to evil sorcerers. Girls on the Road (also known as Hot Summer Week) is an especially cheesy cinematic mash-up of teenage road/party movies and exploitation films that only exists to put a couple of nubile, innocent young girls in a precarious situation." 

Trailer to

Last House on the Left:

Mondo Digital opinions that "Though the script is a complete mess, the film has its lo-fi charms thanks to the locations (at times feeling like a grindhouse version of The Sandpiper [1965 / trailer]) and better performances than the material demands. [...] Much of the film doesn't rise above the technical level of Harry Novak helmer Bethel Buckalew, right down to the cutesy 'found' opening credits on newspapers and bumper stickers; however, its dippy mix of seaside free love and cheap psycho thrills definitely gives it a unique flavor."

"DVD Talk is a little more indifferent: "Part road movie, part comedy, part slasher film and part romantic drama, Girls on the Road doesn't really do any of those genres well but is at least interesting in that it tries. [...] As far as the performances go, most of them are pretty goofy. Kathleen Cody and Dianne Hull are a little grating at first, as they bicker and ramble on about cutting loose and getting away from it all without actually doing any of that, at least initially. As the movie goes on you do start to like them a little bit more as their characters do start to show a bit of maturity. Michael Ontkean is fun as Will, playing his slightly deranged part with a bit of pleasant scenery chewing, while Ralph Waite's all-too-caring hippy leader is creepy in his kindness, particularly in his affections for the underage Karen later in the film. The real star of the film, however, is John McMurty as The Maker. His performance is quirky and creepy and just off kilter enough to make his part really stand out from the rest of the characters in the film and had the picture given him more screen time, it probably would have been a whole lot more interesting. As it stands, it's a marginally amusing cult oddity that should have been a whole lot more fun than it was."

And finally, Bleeding Skull seethes, "We all enjoy an unsettling day at the beach circa 1970. Just look at Last Summer (1969 / trailer) or Terror at Red Wolf Inn (1972 / trailer). Effective. Singular. And constructed with a resourceful consciousness across the board. Conversely, Girls is imbued with the innocence of a Partridge Family (1970-74) episode on a Harry Novak budget. But, whereas Mr. Novak might rescue a similar film with unexpected bouts of pathos/hilarity and heaps of exploitation, Girls is ultimately content with misguided semantics, a bland itinerary, and .5 seconds of nudity. In short, it's a time capsule bereft of satiation." 

In a better world, the Partridge Family

would have sung this for Uschi Digaard:

Now go to Part VII (1973-74).