Babes of Yesteryear: a wasted life's
irregular and P.I. 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.
* 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 60s & early 70s 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…"
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 60s & early 70s 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. You can find her on that predatory thing known as Facebook.
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
Ilsa, She Wolf of the S.S.
(1975,
dir. Don Edmonds)
"The
film you are about to see is based on documented fact. The atrocities shown
were conducted as 'medical experiments' in special concentration camps
throughout Hitler's Third Reich. Although these crimes against humanity are
historically accurate, the characters depicted are composites of notorious Nazi
personalities; and the events portrayed, have been condensed into one locality
for dramatic purposes. Because of its shocking subject matter, this film is
restricted to adult audiences only. We dedicate this film with the hope that
these heinous crimes will never happen again."
Produced by "Herman Traeger",
otherwise known as David F. Friedman. Rumor has it that this is the most-viewed movie at both Steve Bannon's and Sebastian Gorka's
circle jerks.
When it comes to exploitation movies, the Ilsa movies are without doubt some of
the most infamous. Don
Edmonds (1 Sept 1937 – 30 May 2009), whose
directorial debut was Wild Honey (1971,
see Part V), which also featured Uschi, directed both
this, the first Ilsa movie, and the first sequel, Ilsa,
Harem Keeper of the Oil Sheiks (1976). The first sequel, like the later two that followed in
1977 — Jean LaFleur's Ilsa, The Tigress
of Siberia (trailer) and Jess Franco's Ilsa, the Wicked Warden
a.k.a. Greta, The Mad Butcher (trailer) — ignores the fact that Ilsa actually
dies at the end of Ilsa, She Wolf of the
S.S.
Trailer to
Ilsa, She Wolf of the S.S.:
Undoubtedly Ilsa, She Wolf of the S.S. got made due to the success of the
earlier David F. Friedman Naziploitation WIP sexploiter, Lee Frost's Love
Camp 7 (1969 / trailer). The script was supplied by
"Jonah Royston", a.k.a. John C.W. Saxton
(4 Dec 1930 – 15 May 1987), the scriptwriter behind such fun stuff as Happy Birthday to Me (1981 / trailer) & Class
of 1984 (1982 / trailer), and was probably inspired by two
infamous real-life female Nazi concentration camp wardens, Ilse "The Bitch of Buchenwald" Koch (22 Sept 1906 – 1 Sept
1967) and Irma "The Hyena of
Auschwitz"
Grese (7 Oct 1923 – 13 Dec 1945), the latter of whom was supposedly a sadistic
nympho. Ilsa, She Wolf of the S.S. was
shot in nine days in Culver City, CA, on the sets of the recently cancelled TV series Hogan's
Heroes (1965-71).
Uschi shows up, uncredited, as one of the
tortured female prisoners (you can see her in the background of the photo below). If sexploitation veteran Dyanne
Thorne wasn't a "name" prior to this movie, she sure was afterwards.
The same year she made this movie, she married occasional co-star Howard
Maurer. Currently, Dr. Dyanne Maurer (PhD, LLD, DD) and Dr. Howard Maurer (Dr.
of Mus., DD), as ordained ministers, do weddings in
Las Vegas.*
* Let us correct that: She was an ordained minister. Unbeknownst to us, between the time we wrote this blog entry and posted it, she died. On 28 Jan 2020, to be exact.
The Worldwide Celluloid Massacre, which lists the movie as
"recommended" and calls it "the absolute, unsurpassed apex of
exploitation sleaze", has the plot: "In a Nazi camp, men and women
are experimented on in a wide variety of horrifying ways by Ilsa (Thorne), an
Aryan dominatrix whose pet project involves proving that women can withstand
more pain and torture than men, and also tends to punish men that don't perform
to her satisfaction in bed until an American (Gregory
Knoph) comes to tame the shrew with his sexual prowess. The real tragedy
is that this story is based on real experiments and accounts of SS camps, only
in this movie the girls are all sexy, and the nudity, S&M and gore are
gratuitous and rampant."
The Science
Fiction, Horror and Fantasy Film Review says, "The basic appeal of Ilsa,
She Wolf of the SS is a parade of tortures. These become quite
extreme — burning brands and electrified dildos shoved up the vagina, maggots
placed in open wounds, people being boiled alive and splattered in pressure chambers
[Uschi]. What is utterly outrageous about Ilsa is how it exploits the
Jewish Holocaust for its ends. A pre-credits note announces that it is offering
up a true account of the Holocaust atrocities — a claim that is surely akin to
a porn film declaring that it is making a realistic statement about rape. […]
There is a vague connection to the real experiments conducted in the death
camps by people like Dr Josef Mengele and the film certainly, as it states,
does convey a grimness in depicting these. (If Ilsa had gone a
little bit further the other way in a less exploitative direction it could
almost have been a sobering portrait of sadism as Pier Paolo Pasolini's
masterwork Salo or 120 Days of Sodom
[1975 / trailer]). However, when it comes to the
climax where the prisoners turn the tables on their torturers with equally
sadistic regard, one can see that the producers of Ilsa are only
interested in the pornographic presentation of acts of torture without regard
for who is conducting them."
Indeed, House of Self-Indulgence, which insists that "Ilsa: She Wolf of the SS is all about
postponing the ejection of seminal fluid", points out that "Utilizing
the well-worn titillate-then-repulse method of exploitation filmmaking,
director Don Edmonds seems to revel in causing your aroused feelings to quickly
turn into ones of revulsion and disgust. Having us cheering on a man's genitals
to plunge as far as they can vaginally go one minute, only to have us wincing
uncontrollably a mere ten seconds later when those very genitals are
unceremoniously removed without even as much as a half-hearted Auf Wiedersehen was a tad jarring."
* Let us correct that: She was an ordained minister. Unbeknownst to us, between the time we wrote this blog entry and posted it, she died. On 28 Jan 2020, to be exact.
The Klezmatics doing
Woody Guthrie's
song Ilsa Koch:
Pastries
(1975 dir. "Adele Robbins")
"Adele Robbins", a.k.a. "David
Fleetwood" and Joe Robertson. We took a look at Joseph F. Robertson (17
April 1925 – 8 July 2001) in Part IV: 1971, when we took a look at his sexsploiter A Touch of Sweden, which is actually
this movie as well: someone (probably Robertson) took the original soft-core
movie and re-edited it with added hardcore inserts and thus A Touch of Sweden became
Pastries.
12 minutes of
A Touch of Sweden:
Inside Amy
(1975, dir. Ronald Víctor García)
A.k.a. Swinger's
Massacre and Super Swinging
Playmates. Directed by the man who brought you The Toy Box (1971, see Part IV). Ronald Víctor García is now an artist. This "grim, serious and epic hard-R-rated
film filled with sex and murder" with "X actresses like Uschi,
Rene
Bond and Marsha Jordan in bit roles" is available from Alpha Blue. The full film can also be found online at any given virus-laden porn
site…
Trailer to
Swingers Massacre:
Trash
Film Guru — which asks the valid question "What
kind of a movie features Uschi Digard, Rene Bond, and Marsha Jordan and doesn't
have any of them […] git nekkid?" — is less impressed by the movie, which
it calls "a mid-70s exploitation flick with an inherently anti-sex,
pro-traditional-values message, in this case on the 'evils' of wipe-swapping,
disguised as a titillating softcore skin parade". In his view, Inside Amy is one of the "most repugnant pieces of business you're ever
likely to see" because of "the tone director Garcia takes":
"From the moment Charlie can't get his prick to pop up (for Marsha Jordan,
no less), it's pretty clear that Ron G. wants the audience to both empathize
with, and frankly to assume, the limp-dicked lawyer's point of view! In […] a
lazily oozing little number called Who
Knows What Goes On Inside Amy?, the lyrics for which tell her (and, by
extension, us) that it's Amy herself who's headed down the road to ruin, that
she'd better get home and start being a housewife again, that the nasty, filthy
fantasies inside her head are going to tear her loving marriage apart — as
if all this shit were her fault! Hell, once
Charlie starts killing, he's just doing what any normal, red-blooded American
guy who's wife has had a fair number of strangers' pricks in her would do,
right? […] That's exactly the editorial
viewpoint that Garcia assumes with the rest of this flick. […] Who the hell
wrote this script — Rick Santorum? So what we've got here goes well beyond the
simple anti-sex, puritanical messaging inherent in so many exploitation flicks
that market themselves as being transgressive, footloose, and fancy-free. This
crosses the line from being anti-pleasure into being straight-up, and
muscularly, anti-women, in a way that even
the most transparent slasher flick that kills all the girls who like sex while
having the virgin save the day and be the sole survivor never could. You'd
certainly never get away with anything this stridently patriarchal, not to
mention openly afraid of female sexuality, today*
— which is probably for the best, I suppose."
* Maybe not as a movie, but as a Republican,
most likely, and as a President, definitely. Which is definitely not for the
best.
Kitty Can't Help It
(1975, dir.
Peter Locke)
Since Wes Craven was an editor on this movie,
we looked at it briefly at R.I.P.: Wesley
Earl "Wes" Craven, Part I (1970-1977), where we wrote:
"A.k.a. California Drive-In Girls, Drive
In and The Carhops; the last
known directorial effort of Peter Locke. Wes Craven was the editor of this
grindhouse comedy, a relatively generic if entertaining jiggler — among the
bongos seen, those of the great Uschi Digard, the 'Lady in Hotel Room' [and, on
the original poster, as 'the girl with the 48's'].
"Movies About Girls has long, detailed review of the movie, which
we've emasculated to the following: 'Here's what important to know about The Carhops. It's not about carhops.
The carhopping is over with two minutes into the film. So then, what is it
about? Hard to say. Rape, mostly. [...] Carhops
has an excellent poster and an excellent title, which not only got it made, but
is apparently still convincing saps like yours cruelly to watch it. [...] Porn
and gore, apparently, is something Locke can do with panache. R-rated sex
comedies, on the other hand, are just not his forte. Bland, creepy, and
depressingly unfunny, with less nudity than you'd like and more threats of rape
than you could possibly need, Carhops
is useful only to Uschi completists and groupie enthusiasts keen on seeing Pam
Des Barres strum an acoustic guitar. I didn't exactly feel cheated, but I'm
pretty numb at this point. You'd probably be pretty disappointed.'"
The car chase from
The Carhops:
The Carhops:
Today, we would like to point out what Temple of Shock says: "The Carhops is credited with a 1975 release date on the IMDb, which
is incorrect. NMD Film Distributing put out the version known as The Carhops in 1977. As for the 1975
release date, that applies to Kitty
Can't Help It, the original cut of the movie without the carhop
footage that was added for the '77 release. Given an R rating by the MPAA in
1974, Kitty Can't Help It was
released by Mammoth Films in 1975. (The ad above [the "car chase"] is from a May '75 run in De
Moines, IA.)"
Every 70s Movie has the plot: "[...] This abysmal sex
comedy involves a group of young women trying to get their friend laid
properly. The protagonist, Kitty (Kitty Carl), can't find a man who satisfies
her, so she shares her problem with buddies who include hookers and swingers,
as well as carhops. All of them tell their boyfriends and/or husbands to sleep
with Kitty, but none gets the job done. It's not as if Kitty has compunctions
about screwing her friends' significant others. Instead, 'comedic'
circumstances intrude just when things get hot. In one scene, Kitty and a dude
try humping in the desert, but Kitty freaks out when a large iguana appears
nearby. Seeking to look macho, the dude not only picks up the iguana but also
tries to kiss the lizard, which bites the dude's tongue. And so on. Kitty
Can't Help It comprises one underwhelming scene after another, and
most of the acting is shoddy. One exception is the versatile Jack DeLeon, whose
psychopathic character torments Kitty whenever the filmmakers decide, unwisely,
to include something serious […]. Yet the only genuinely famous person in the
cast is Pamela Des Barres, who plays one of Kitty's generous friends.
Previously known as 'Miss Pamela', Des Barres is a notorious rock-music groupie
who penned the definitive memoir on servicing popular musicians, I'm with
the Band (1987)."
Paul Ross, one of the two credited
scriptwriters, went on to help script the "documentary" Journey into the Beyond (1975 / trailer
below) and the horror movie Beyond Evil
(1980 / trailer).
Trailer to
Journey into the Beyond:
Female Chauvinists
(1975, dir.
Jourdan Alexander)
A.k.a., down under, as Pussy Brigade. In Germany, as the Farm der Superhexen, or "Farm of the Super Witches." In his The
XXX Filmography, 1968-1988, Jason S. Martinko writes "P/D: Jay Jackson. Cast:
Candy Samples (non sex), Roxanne Brewer (non sex), Uschi Digard (non sex), Eve
Orlon (as Sunny Boyd), Linda York, Deborah McGuire, Rick Dillon. A girl is sent
by a photographer to go undercover into a training camp run by man-hating
lesbian feminists. She also brings along her lover, who fakes being a deaf
mute. He ends up getting gang raped by the militant feminists. The screenplay
was written by Jack Holtzman. Cinematography was done by Fred Goodich and film
editing was done by Jay Jackson."
Trailer to
Female Chauvinists:
Female Chauvinists has a cast that includes some pneumatic
actresses that would make Russ Meyer proud: aside from Uschi and Candy Samples (12 Apr 1940 – 30 Sept 2019),
the impressive Roxanne Brewer (1 Mar 1941 – 1 Oct 1987) and Deborah
McGuire (below, with Uschi, from the film) are found in this time capsule.
Over at Cinema Headcheese, in their blog entry Interracial Sex Havoc Part #4:
1976 they say, "This [...] is a sexist satire of the feminist movement. It is
also very boring and not funny at all. For
starters, the feminists won't let a transsexual join their demonstrations. But
the film really kicks off when a girl with enormous tits (Brewer) has sex with
a guy (Rick Dillon) while a photographer is taking
pictures of them, soon he will convince her to join the movement. 'They are
just women; they need a man to straighten them up.' On with the show, women are
using bottles as sex toys and one of them says that she became a lesbian
because her father raped her when she was young. Anyway, there's loads of
interracial sex in this one, mainly between a black girl (McGuire) and several white performers.
GOD IS A FEMALE."
It should perhaps be pointed out that
the hardcore sex was subsequently added, so not everyone shown having sex is
actually having the sex. Indeed, WIP Films complains that the movie "would be a soft-core classic for
fans of women with huge breasts, but is ruined by (lots of) badly edited-in
additional hard X inserts and scenes".
At Something Weird, Prince Pervo offers a somewhat more
blow-by-blow description of the movie: "'Do unto the male chauvinist pigs
as they have done unto you!' shrieks Ms. Fulla Bull (Nora
Holliday), the gnome-like leader of a militant group of Female Chauvinists […], and while
protesting in Hollywood, she attracts the attention of Cecil, a creepy photographer,
who gets an idea. 'I want to expose them for the dirty bunch of lesbians they
really are,' he tells Boopsie (the breast-heavy Brewer, who probably woud've
been a burlesque superstar if she'd been born a bit earlier). Boopsie promptly
enrolls in Ms. Bull's training camp which also includes such new recruits as Glory
(Debbie McGuire, one of the few black stars of sexploitation), Chi Chi (Eva
Orlon, billed here as 'Sunny Boyd'), […] and the dramatically contoured Uschi
Digard as Pussy, a die-hard dyke in love with her galpal Lucy (Helen
O'Connell). ('Lucy likes Pussy,' get it?) Sure enough, there's plenty of
lesbian action in the camp — almost all of which involves Uschi ('It may be a
dog-eat-dog world out there, but it's a pussy-eat-pussy world down here!') —
but there are also classes on the vagina and male supremacy as well as group
masturbation with Dr. Pepper bottles. By pretending to be deaf and dumb,
Boopsie's boyfriend Vince also infiltrates the compound and is hired as a
handyman and clandestine stud until Ms. Bull learns of him ('We have found a
serpent in our Garden of Eden!'). Though a 'castration ceremony' is scheduled,
the gals instead decide to spare and 'study him' by keeping Vince in a stable
where he's forced to service each girl at a time.... We're also treated to
Uschi and Roxanne doing a steamy girl-girl scene; a surreal dream scene in
which Uschi and a bunch of the gals rob a 'sperm bank' in the middle of the
woods; and, shockingly, Ms. Bull even getting into the action by stripping off
her clothes and diving on Vince — a moment in celluloid history that will
absolutely scar everyone who views it. And then there's hardcore — most of it
spliced in from other films. […] On the other hand, the original version wasn't
entirely softcore in the first place and crossed the line with some of the
masturbation scenes (note Debbie and the bottle) as well as some oral sex which
is somewhat obscured by the camera but definitely not faked. In fact, part of
the perverse pleasure here is trying to determine if the active genitalia do or
do not really belong to the people on screen. Ah, the joys of studying film...."
Supervixens
(1975, writ & dir.
Russ Meer)
We took a quick looked this classic Meyer's
film way back in 2011 in our R.I.P.
Career Review of Charles Napier, where we scribbled:
The lead female of the movie, the intensely
beautiful Shari Eubank, plays two roles and left the film business after her
next movie, the less-memorable Chesty Anderson, USN (1976 / excerpt), to return to Illinois to teach; she
currently works* at Blue Ridge High, and her great smile seems to be very
much intact. Over at Bright Lights Russ Meyer once claimed the film, the
first that he wrote alone ('together with the actors'), is his version of an
Horatio Alger tale: 'They were always about a young man who was totally good,
and he would always set out to gain his fortune and he would always come up
against terrible people. They did everything they could to do him in, but he
fought fair, you know, and he always survived and succeeded in the end.'
* By now, actually, she could well be retired. One stays ageless only on film.
* By now, actually, she could well be retired. One stays ageless only on film.
And, finally: the plot — as explained by All Movie: "[...] Clint (Charles Pitts) is
working at a gas station (run by none other than Martin Bormann (Henry
Rowland), who was working as a bartender in Meyer's Beyond the Valley of the
Dolls) when his wife (Eubank) is brutally murdered by Harry Sledge (Charles Napier), a cop with a deeply sadistic
streak. Clint tries to bring Harry to justice while Harry attempts to frame
Clint for the crime. In the meantime, Clint is constantly pursued by a variety
of women with improbable names, voracious sexual appetites and bodies that make
Pamela Anderson look like Kate Moss. [...] Supervixens features a
villainous performance by Charles Napier, another from Meyer stalwart Stuart
Lancaster and several typically cantilevered beauties, including Haji, Shari
Eubank and Uschi Digard." Not to mention Christy Hartburg as SuperLorna,
the poster girl, in her only film role ever,* and the Afro American babe Deborah
McGuire as SuperEula..."
* Since then, it has come to be revealed that "Christy Hartburg", possibly born Christine Siggelakis,
did indeed take part in a few later movie and TV projects, but under the name
"Christina Cummings". She had blink-and-you-miss-it appearances in National Lampoon's Movie Madness (1982
/ trailer) and Wacko (1982 / trailer).
Trailer to
Supervixens:
The Black Gestapo
(1975, dir Lee
Frost)
A.k.a. Ghetto
Warriors and Black Enforcers. It
was perhaps to be expected that when the legendary sleaze-sploitation director
Lee Frost (14 Aug 1935 – 25 May 2007), together with his regular collaborator
Wes Bishop (12 Sept 1932 – 25 June 1993), would finally decide to jump on the Blaxploitation
bandwagon, they would try something as insane as melding it with Nazi-sploitation.
The Black Gestapo was not exactly a
big hit when it came out, in part (we assume) because it was so obviously
subconsciously anti-black, but the years has given the movie a certain level of
cult popularity, to the point that a website like Last Movie Review on the Left — a honky website as lily-white as this one,
we assume — now raves "Action, beautiful naked women, big bad black guys,
and a cool funky soundtrack. Blaxploitation at its finest."
Trailer to
The Black Gestapo:
Pre-cert has the plot description as found on
some old VHS: "They are the Ghetto
Warriors. The People's Army has declared war on the streets. It could have happened in
any major city in the United States. Ex-Vietnam veteran General Ahmed (Rod Perry of The
Black Godfather [1974 / trailer]) fought for years for a grant from
the city to operate a peoples [sic] army, a black organization dedicated to
dealing with the problems of the Black Ghetto. His small army of 100 operated
weekly food programmes for the poor and several detoxification units for
alcoholics and drug addicts. All in opposition to the White Syndicate pumping
drugs into the people faster than the peoples [sic] army could stem the flow.
It was Colonel Kojah (Charles Robinson of Beowulf [1999] and Set It Off [1996]), Ahmed's Chief of Staff, who suggested they form a
security force. Ahmed is cautious knowing that Kojah is capable of extreme
violence and does not wish to start a blood bath between Whites and Blacks.
However, when pretty Marsha Moore (Angela Brent), a
nurse in one of the detoxification clinics and one time lover of General Ahmed
is savagely beaten and raped by two of the syndicates [sic] men, Ahmed gives in
to Colonel Kojah's demands for a security force and the target is vengeance,
power and The Black Gestapo…"
Both Lee Frost and Wes Bishop play white bad
guys in this movie, while Uschi Digard plays the white ho' of Kojah.
Trash
City
points out the obvious: "As the Blaxploitation fad ran its course, entries
got more off-the-wall. This may be the looniest of them all, not least for its
Nazi footage, set to a funky 'wacka-chikka' soundtrack. […]"
Music to
The Black Gestapo:
While the Department of Afro-American Research Arts & Culture (DAARAC) doesn't have any contentions
with the movie, Bad Azz MoFo takes a look at some of the movie's subtexts
and does, thus spleening: "There are so many bad Blaxploitation movies
(and by bad, I don't mean good), that it's hard to say which are the ones you
should avoid the most. If, however, you find yourself in a situation where you
have an opportunity to see The Black Gestapo, I'd really
recommend watching something like bestiality videos instead. Basically, what I'm
trying to say is that if you never watch a Blaxploitation film in your life,
this is the one to not see. This ineptly executed little ditty tells the story
of the People's Army, a Black Panther-like organization that protects the
neighborhood, but is led astray by corruption and white poontang. […] Things
begin to get out of hand as the security force start shakin' down the
community, takin' up criminal activities, and makin' it with the white ho's
that lounge around the pool at the People's Army stronghold, while Kojah and
his homies eat fried chicken. Seriously. […] The Black Gestapo
can best be described as B-movie honky propaganda. The very concept of black
empowerment and militancy is raped and distorted by this low-rent piece rancid
garbage. And I do mean low rent. On a technical basis alone this movie is a
loser. If movies were toilet paper, this would be the equivalent to wiping your
ass with plywood. Apparently writer Wes Bishop and director Lee Frost were
trying to draw some comparison to the black power movement, Nazi Germany, and
maybe even Idi Amin's regime that was then in power in Uganda."
Over at the imdb, in turn, some guy named horrorbargainbin sees
it less extreme, saying instead that "The first half of the film is the better with
the evil white crime syndicate going to war with The People's Army. All too
soon though, The People's Army is exploiting its own people in the exact same
manner the driven-out whites did. No, we can no longer root for the Black
Gestapo since they are shown doing or saying the exact same horrible things the
whites had previously done in at least three scenes. The point, very much the same
as that of the novel Animal Farm, is
really driven home so that even the least sharp viewer could grasp it. Those
who overthrow the oppressor are doomed to become oppressors themselves."
If You Don't Stop It... You'll Go
Blind!!!
(1975, dir. Keefe Brasselle & I. Robert Levy)
One of only two directorial credits by minor
actor Keefe Brasselle (7 Feb 1923 – 7 July 1981, of Not Wanted [1949 / trailer] and Black Gunn [1972 / trailer]); his other co-directorial credit is
for The Fighting Wildcats (1957),
produced by Richard Gordon (see R.I.P. Richard Gordon). Brasselle's co-director for this movie here
is I. Robert Levy, who went on to direct the follow-up film, Can I Do It Till I Need Glasses (1977 /
trailer) alone.
This is one of a plethora of puerile sketch
comedy flicks to hit the screen throughout the seventies and early eighties,
all of which were illegitimate offspring of Laugh-In. This one here is a bit like H.G. Lewis's Miss Nymphet's Zap In (1970 / trailer) in that all the jokes are basically
just sex jokes, but despite how cheap If
You Don't Stop… might look, it looks like a million dollars in comparison
to Lewis's no-budget production.
Like its sequel, this movie was written by I.
Robert Levy, Mike Price and Mike Callie; the last of the trio went on to write
and self-publish a whole series of "bad taste joke books (available at Amazon,
for example) with titles such as The
Hilarious Guide to Great Bad Taste Dirty Jokes, The Hilarious Guide to Great
Bad Taste Mexican Jokes and/or Trump
vs Hillary: The Ultimate Bad Taste Political Joke Book. One and all, perfect Christmas gifts for your Trump-voting family member.*
* Let's look at the sales description to Vice President Pence's favorite book of the series, The Hilarious Guide to Great Bad Taste Gay and Lesbian Jokes Vol 6: "A superb and funny collection of over
220 premium Classic Dirty, Bad Taste, Offensive, insulting, and
Perverted GAY & LESBIAN JOKES & ONE LINERS that FAGS, LESBOS,
HOMOS, PECKER PUFFERS,CRACK SNACKERS, GASH GOBBLERS, FUDGE PACKERS,
DYKES, RUG MUNCHERS, WEENIE WASHERS, ASS BANDITS & 'BRUCIES' Really
Hate…. And Rightfully So! Written, Edited and 'Massaged' for the needy 'Bad Taste Deprived' by Acclaimed Comedy & Joke Writer and Prodcer,
MIKE CALLIE [...]"
Retrospace hits the nail on the head by saying, "If You Don't Stop It, You'll
Go Blind (1975) is just a collection of off-color jokes put to film.
Consider it a film adaptation of a dirty joke book.... which is not necessarily
a bad thing. Lightweight, fun, ribald humor is a dead art. I think we're so
inundated these days with much more graphic stuff, that cheeky humor just
seems... well, a bit lame. […] As to this movie, I really can't give it a
proper review except to say that if you like vintage cocktail lounge comedy,
you'll appreciate this film. There's no plot, just joke after joke."
Hah Hah Hah!
There is a framing story, of course, as Movie Guy notes, "They're the kind of jokes that teenage
boys whisper to each other in the junior high/middle school locker room after
gym class. […] The premise that holds these sketches together is an awards show
that recognizes various achievements in all things sexual...... Best Lay of the
Year, Best Solo Performance of the Year, Most Persistant Pansy, Best Set of
Jugs, etc. The awards show, hosted by Pat McCormick (as himself), plays like an
Academy Awards ceremony, it even has a great finale, a Busby Berkeley-like
number featuring actor Keefe Brassell (A
Place in the Sun [1951 / trailer]) singing Don't Fuck Around With Love. It's one of this flick's many
highlights. The viewer gets a series of jokes about homosexuality, impotence,
bestiality, adultery, profane old ladies, masturbation, female anatomy and
leering sex perverts and degenerates. Some of the gags work and some don't. […]
The filmmakers pretty much leave no stone unturned, they reference almost every
sexual matter and the movie rightfully deserves it's R-rating. It's one of
those dirty movies that no parent in their right mind would allow their teens
to watch, even though the level of humor appears to be aimed at 14-year-old
boys, so they wait until the parents are asleep before sneaking downstairs to
watch it at 2:15 am on cable TV. They keep the sound turned down very low and
cover their mouths while they snicker at the corny gags and gawk at the
abundance of naked ladies. […]"
We here at a wasted life searched long and hard to find Keefe Brasselle's song Don't Fuck Around With Love somewhere
online, but were unsuccessful. For that, however, we found the song below. A
real doo-wop song from 1953 recorded by a long forgotten (if ever known) group
named The Blenders as an "alternative take" to
their official Jay Dee Records release, Don't
Play Around with Love.
The Blenders sing
Don't Fuck Around With Love:
The Killer Elite
(1975, dir. Sam
Peckinpah)
Uschi Digard, glorified extra: uncredited,
she's a party guest in the background of some scene somewhere in this movie.
This Peckinpah sock-em chop-em movie (!!!) is based on a novel by "Robert Rostand" originally entitled Monkey
in the Middle (but which now shares the name of the film), and if we
are to believe Wikipedia (03.29.18), James Caan, the movie's lead, rates the movie
"zero on a scale of ten" and only took the part on the recommendation
of his advisors; at Revolvy, on the other hand, they say he rates it five out ten.
Trivia unrelated to this film: One of James Caan's earliest film
appearances, uncredited, is as a "Soldier with radio" somewhere in Irma La Deuce (1963 / trailer), in which not Uschi but another
big-breasted icon had a relatively visible part: Tura Satana (10 July 1938 – 4 Frb 2011) played Suzette Wong.
Trailer to
The Killer Elite:
At Ozus'
World Movie Reviews, Dennis Schwartz, who thinks that "the convoluted plot is enhanced greatly by Peckinpah's gritty direction,
though it could and should have been more exciting", offers the
following plot description: "Tough
guy ladies man Mike Locken (James Caan of Way of the Gun [2000]]) is a
mercenary CIA-like security agent employed by the shadowy organization Com Teg,
run by the mysterious Laurence Weyburn (Gig Young of The Shuttered Room
[1967 / trailer]) and under
him is the ambitious field boss Cap Collis (Arthur Hill). The company receives
payments from the CIA to do jobs it is not sanctioned to do. Mike's partner and
best friend George Hansen (Robert Duvall) turns out to be a double-crosser who
leaves him for a cripple, after he was richly bought off to go over to the
other side. […] Bent on revenge, Mike works hard to rehab so he can walk again
with the aid of a cane and he also diligently works-out in martial arts. Mike's
lured out of retirement by the unreliable Collis when there's a failed attempt
at the San Francisco airport by Japanese ninjas to assassinate Yuen Chung
(Mako), an anti-Communist Chinese political leader. Mike is further told that
the backup hit-men team at the airport were Hansen and an associate named
Hamilton. Mike recruits for $500 a day a team of trigger-happy sharpshooter
Jerome Miller (Bo Hopkins of Crack in the
Floor [2001] and Uncle Sam [1996]) and
loyal wheel-man Mac (Burt Young of Blood Beach [1980 / trailer] and Carnival
of Blood [1970 / trailer]), and the trio in a straightforward action-packed
manner aim to take down the baddies while protecting their idealistic political
client."
The Parrallax Review was not all
that impressed by the movie, saying: "Mid-'70s Peckinpah! Ah, but therein lies the
rub. That may have been Peckinpah's most fruitful period, but by 1975, it was
also the beginning of the end of his career. There's a distinct feeling
throughout this movie that you're muddling through a hangover. Many scenes feel
disconnected, and so does much of the acting by Caan, who tries for charmingly
unpolished but often gives us smarmy, mumbled lines, as if he were coked out.
Caan is said to have introduced Peckinpah to cocaine during the shoot, and the
rambling incoherency on screen — including the dialogue and direction —
certainly seems in line with that."
Surrender to the Void sees the film as flawed, but also thinks that
"The Killer Elite is a remarkable film from Sam Peckinpah
that features excellent performances from James Caan, Robert Duvall, and Burt
Young. While it may be considered one of Peckinpah's weaker films, it is still
a fascinating suspense-thriller that does play into Peckinpah's fascination
with man and changing times as well this growing sense of cynicism where honor
and loyalty are becoming non-existent. In the end, The Killer Elite is
a marvelous film from Sam Peckinpah."
Despite what some think, this movie was not
remade in 2011. That Killer Elite,
featuring two men we here at a wasted life would love to see in full frontal nude — Jason Stratham and Dominic
Purcell — is based on the novel The
Feather Men by Ranulph Fiennes and has no Uschi in it, anywhere.
Trailer to
Killer Elite:
A Climax of Blue Power
(1975, dir.
"F.C. Perl")
Director "F.C. Perl" is otherwise
known as Lee Frost, a (dead) filmmaker who needs no introduction to sleaze
fans. He also used the "Franklin G. Pearl" moniker a few years
earlier for Poor Cecily (1973, see Part
VII). A Climax of Blue
Power was obviously made as a skin-heavy "roughie", but by the
time it hit the grindhouses it had been reedited with a lot of XXX inserts.
Going by stills that exist, Uschi may have had a larger and nuder part in the
original (and lost) soft-core version, but in the hardcore edit that survives,
she shows up for all of a few minutes and keeps her clothes on.
Opening title to
A Climax of Blue Power:
Over at Amazon.com, Dr. Nono gives this "porn-with-plot potboiler" five out of
five stars and says, "For those who like plot with their porn, Climax of Blue Power delivers energetic
doses of each. Made in the 1970s when sex films used crudely-wrought plotlines
to accent their carnal appeal (and to provide a defense against the obscenity
laws of the time), Climax has a
story that would have been effective without graphic depictions of sex but its
provocative themes are well-served by them. […] The sexual sadism of the 1970s
'roughie' porn genre is usually too absurd to be disturbing, and that's pretty
much the case here. Nevertheless, there's plenty of oddball debauchery to
distinguish Climax of Blue Power as
one of the most interesting roughies of the era. Throw in a great,
atmospherically funky soundtrack, dream sequences, a plot twist revealing why
the murder was deemed a suicide and a finale car chase that winds through the
arid scenery of Southern California, and you got some blue-powerful bang for
your buck! And the sex? Yeah, you get that too."
And when it comes to the sex, DVD
Drive-in is of the opinion that "Lee Frost most probably shot this as one of
his softcore two-day wonders. [...] Frost shot a series of ultra-low budget sex
films in the early 1970s, and the look and feel of A Climax of Blue Power seems to gel with
these quickies. However, it only saw theatrical distribution in 1974, when
softcore had gone the way of the dinosaurs (and after Frost had some kind of
credibility as a director, hence the pseudonym 'F.C. Perl' on this baby). It's
doubtful Frost shot the hardcore footage for the release version (paging Chris
Poggiali!), but it's actually pretty well-integrated. The viewer could actually
buy that a given cock could belong to a given actor, and that an active mouth
could belong to an active sex performer (the only exception to this is Angela
Carnon's body double, who looks nothing like her)."
Girls
Guns and Ghouls could
do without the bodywork: "A Climax of Blue
Power is not really that much fun to watch. I would have
appreciated it a lot more if the ugly hardcore bits weren't so clumsily spliced
in. The sex actors don't look anything like their softcore counterparts, most
of the time. The film would have definitely stood up as a softcore feature on
its own. Still, I guess films such as these weren't made for the Merchant Ivory
crowd. Jason Carns tries pretty hard as Eddie, and in some scenes pulls off the
psychopath he's meant to be. Lee Frost […] has created quite the sick little
drama with this dark, generally unknown little beast, and you can occasionally
feel some discomfort being inside Eddie's head, even in the non-explicit scenes
when he's just alone and ranting against the world. It does seem that some
attempt was made at art, of a sort. Of course, any storylines, drama and
character development quickly vanished from sex cinema as the years went by, so
maybe films as unique as these need to be viewed and appreciated on some
levels."
A scene from
A Climax in Blue:
More, more, more Uschi is found here.
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