A.k.a. Bestien der Samurei, Die Nackten und die Bestien, The Naked Seven, The Sengoku Rock: Female Warriors, and many more titles. The German
DVD we watched was entitled Bestien der Samurai,
but at one point or another it was released in the land of sausage and beer as Die Satansweiber aus Fernost("She-Devils of the Far East"),
a title notable only for the attempt to link the Japanese flick by title to
Russ Meyer's classic roughie, Faster,
Pussycat, Kill! Kill! (1966 / trailer,
starring Haji
and Tura
Satana), which in Germany was given the title Die Satansweiber von Tittenfield ("She-Devils from Titsfield").
There is little that the two films have in common; indeed, if director Yasuharu
Hasebe's film calls any American exploiters to mind when watched, it would
probably be HG
Lewis's She Devils on Wheels (1968
/ trailer) or, closer
to the horse bone, Al Adamson's The Female
Bunch (1969 / trailer)
— although, when it comes to sheer boobage, as in the amount of naked breast
(and to a lesser extent, naked flesh in general) seen over the course of this
Japanese soft-core costume sex film, neither Meyer's film nor Lewis's nor
Adamson's can hold a candle in comparison. Sengoku
rokku: hayate no onna-tachi is a literal breast celebration: a movie whose
limited non-plot (in the cut we watched) is nothing more than excuse to show
pert, shapely, Asian B and C cups with hard nipples.
German trailer to Die
Nackten und die Bestien:
According to
online sources, the original version of the movie is 120 minutes long; the cut
we saw was a mere 75 mins, which means a lot was cut. (Some
cut scenes.) As far as we can tell, the whole plot aspect mentioned
elsewhere about how our group of seven women coming to the assistance of a
village* got jettisoned, for the
film we watched began with the seven gals watching and then goading the last
two survivors of a battle, each from the opposing side, to battle to the death.
And while our DVD claims they want to enter the bordello business and thus must
cross swords with a samurai out to stop them, in the film itself they enter a
bordello to have fun and because their leader, Eno (Mari
Tanaka), is in love with the self-obsessed guy who runs it, Taro Tenma (Kenji
Kaji), a dude with a hilarious haircut and enough testosterone to share. Out of love, she gets her gals to steal a shipment of
guns, which results in the local overlord setting out to raping and killing the
often naked seven; those his men fail to kill end up on the wrong side of Taro and
his men when, hearing that Taro has decided to NOT start a revolt but to sell
the guns back to the local overlord instead, they steal the guns back again.
*An obvious and intended
take off of the plot of The Seven Samurai
(1954 / trailer),
hence the title The Naked Seven. The Seven Samurai, of course and as you
well should know, got remade in the US as the classic oater, The Magnificent Seven (1960 / trailer).
Needless to say,
this film displays a bent that in no way corresponds to the #MeToo or
#NoMeansNo attitudes of today – but then, it is a Japanese "pink film". Women say
no, get fucked anyways, and because the men are such studs, the women moan and
groan in pleasure even as they grimace in pain or distaste or hate. The movie
might present itself as a flick about ass-kicking babes who take no shit, and
indeed on occasion the gals are that, but above all it is a notably misogynistic
flick about gals who get naked a lot and have a lot of sex and do a lot of
stupid stuff and get abused by men and really aren't half as ass-kicking as they
should be. Of the seven, only three – or was it four? who cares? – ride off
into the sunset alive and with their clothes on.
Our screening of
the flick was with a mixed-gender group, which was probably a mistake as there
are a variety of scenes and attitudes that make it uncomfortable to watch is a
situation in which locker room talk is not an option. But it is doubtful that
locker room talk would have really made the movie all that much better; it is,
in the end, one of those kind of flicks that has you go WTF or laugh a lot, but
also makes you feel a little bit dirty. Not because of the sex, but because the
narrative and events have an in-explicitly and oddly anti-woman feel that no amount of bad dubbing,
laughable death scenes, bad fight scenes, hilarious blood effects and inane
plot developments can sugarcoat.
For us, one of
the most memorable moments – aside from the scene in which one of the women,
Nene (Yuri Yamashina), is raped front & back at the same time to get her to
talk ("Talk you cock-sucking whore!") – is the weird crosscut between
five others having debauched fun as one performs some sort of very traditional dance
and song with a nun, resulting an extremely juxtaposition of low and high
culture. Also, we must say the groovy easy-listening aspects of soundtrack, much
of which sounds as if it were lifted from a vintage Jess Franco film, is
absolutely fabulous.
Is the cut
version of Sengoku rokku: hayate no
onna-tachi good? No. Is it interesting? Yes. But it helps to have a high threshold
for misogyny, and to view the movie not as a serious film or artistic
statement, but as a violent, breast-centric parody of samurai films. One can
only wonder what the full 120-minute version is like…
The average adult usually has
around 206 bones in their body (down from around 270 at birth), and if they are
in any way lucky, one or two might be creative. The director of this flick, Ty
West, probably has several creative bones in his, for he tends to make
interesting films — House of the Devil
(2009 / trailer)
& Cabin Fever II: Spring Fever
(2009), for example — even if not all are always a success (see our review of The Innkeepers [2011]). His genre
of activity has tended to be that of horror, but he obviously decided that he
wanted to explore some new terrain in 2016 and, trying his hand at the classic
western, came up with this movie here, which, like most of his movies, he also
wrote.
Trailer to
In a Valley of
Violence:
If movies had bones, one would be
hard placed to say that West's western, as predictable as it is, really has a
creative bone anywhere in its body, but for that, it at least obviously has the
right ones, for it is damn fine semi-spaghetti oater, far less interested in
being an opera or revisionist than simply telling its tale and entertaining the
viewer. From the pre-credit sequence to the final scene, not to mention the
fabulously retro and true-to-its-source credit sequence, one has seen something
similar somewhere else — but, you know, sometimes the most common ingredients
also make a damn fine meal. (Comfort food, so to speak.) Especially if you know
how to tweak the ingredients, which West does often here: the hero is not
really a hero, the bad guy (John Travolta of Lonely Hearts [2006]) not really
all that bad, the hot-headed son (James Ransone of Sinister I [2012] and Sinister II [2015]) and his whore
(Karen Gillan of Oculus [2013]) are both
caricatures, and the women in distress (Taissa Farmiga) a total ditzy
blabbermouth. And then there's Jumpy (Abby), the wonder dog, not to mention a
deputy, Tubby (Tommy Nohilly), who, instead of simply doing what he's told,
goes on a "this ain't my job and my name ain't Tubby" screed when the
shit hits the fan, and a big final showdown that is in no way heroic…
Yeah, you've seen it all before,
more or less, but West adds a bit of, dunno, jalapeno or soy sauce or something
to the traditional salt and pepper. And to his (and the viewer's) luck, he's
also extremely well-supported by a small, tight cast who all play their tropes
very well. The final result is a movie that does a damn good job at taking the
viewer not for a fun gallop but for a fun trot. And if it isn't really into the
sunset, it is at least to an ending that infers that our hero, the Man with a
Name (Ethan Hawke as Paul) — who has a history, has no noble intentions, and
only finally gets involved for good ol' fashion revenge — might maybe have
gotten the girl and, if not, might have at least achieved some sort of sense of
personal redemption or closure.
It's a shame that the movie was such a flop, for it is not a
movie that deserves such a fate. Give it a go, you'll probably like it.
PS: To plug some of our Short
Films of the Month, if you happen to be Western-minded person, dare we
suggest that you check out the following three shorts?
Actually, we had originally intended another short movie as
this month's Short Film of the Month, a disconcertingly funny and eccentric
short from Argentina by Albertina Carri entitled Barbie también puede estar
triste, or Barbie Can Be Sad (2001).
But while Ken has balls, we don't: that short, for all its feminist and
possible LGBTIQ intentions, is nevertheless also hardcore porn enacted by
anatomically correct imitation Barbie dolls, and much like Chuck Vincent's No Strings
Attached (1978) & Le Toy Shop (1980)*, is perhaps a tad too gynecological
fora wasted life, which more
or less generally follows the US edict that death and violence are okay,
especially against women and minorities, but sex will bring about the end of
the world.
*The dates of both shorts, like Chuck Vincent's directorial
credit, is open to discussion as not everyone is in agreement about anything
regarding the dates and makers of these graphic, sex-heavy and hilarious
stop-motion shorts.
So instead of hardcore, we're going softcore, and have
decided to present a film that can already be found hidden amongst all our
posts, namely at Babes
of Yesteryear: Uschi Digard, Part VII: 1973-74, now headlining because
we've come to think that the short actually deserves to be a featured post and
not just a hidden gem. We're talking about the David Grant production, Snow
White and the Seven Perverts.
Although it often is, this Snow White and the Seven Perverts
here should not in any way be confused with the decidedly much more low-rent
1975 (?) German animated porn short Schneeflittchen hinter den Sieben Bergen 1.
Teil (guess what's happening in the house below), which is also often referred
to as Snow White and the Seven Perverts (full
NSFW film). That short, though decidedly and obviously made with less
artistic intention, possibly also deserves being a Short Film of the Month,
too, somewhere...
The 1972 Snow White and the Seven Perverts we're presenting
is far funnier, and its animation style is also far more interesting, polished
and contemporary. Originally given an X-rating by the British Board of Film
Censors, the film was supposedly about 13 minutes long when released; the
version embedded below, the only one we could find online, is much shorter
(10:03 mins), so we would assume it censored – indeed, as sexual and
boundary-pushing as the film is, little of the short below would truly deserve
an X-rating today.
Snow White and the Seven Perverts:
"Happy and dopey and dirty in places, this X-rated
'sextoon' caused a considerable rumpus during its original release, somehow
surviving both a ban from the British censor and a destruction order from the
police. [...] The brainchild of notorious pornographer David Hamilton Grant*,
[...] Grant and his crew hid out here under comedy pseudonyms that perfectly
encapsulates the level of humour in Snow White and the Seven Perverts 'written
by Rinkus O'Penis', 'Edited by Jack Von Ripper'. [...] Grant's take on Snow
White and the Seven Dwarfs sees the big-boobed Snow White escape the clutches
of her wicked stepmother, throw some sex in the direction of the Huntsman and
[...] finding true happiness at the cottage of the seven perverts [...].
Merrily lewd, and a short that truly speaks the language of the dirty
mackintosh brigade, Snow White and the Seven Perverts was one of a number of
animated projects that Grant found himself involved in. His other animated
adventures [...] [include] several collaborations with legendary animator Bob
Godfrey. [Like our Short Film of the Month of November 2019, Woman's
Best Friend(1975).*] [...] Snow White and the Seven Perverts has lost
little of its ability to shock, what with its real and animated nudity,
unconsensual sex and gang rape jokes. There is much here to cause the 'It Was
Alright in the 1970s' mob to reach for their disapproving heads, but it's also
worth pointing out that this is one of the few adaptations of Snow White to not
depict her housemates as dwarfs, and decades before Disney are to give the
world a black Little Mermaid (sic)**, Grant was here serving up a mixed-race
Snow White. David Hamilton Grant- socially progressive? Now there's something
he hasn't been accused of before. [GavCrimson.Blogspot]"
*For more information on the extremely interesting life of
the "notorious pornographer David Hamilton Grant", we suggest you
read the asterisk footnote at our Short Film of the Month of November 2019, Woman's
Best Friend (1975). Some people out there on the web claim that his death
was a ruse and he's still alive today...
**Disney's mermaid is lily white, and the intended
reference is probably to the character Tiana, the Afro American waitress
headlining Disney's The Frog and the Princess (2009 / trailer).
Snow White and the Seven Perverts was supposedly reissued at
one point as Someday My Prince Will Come, a not-so-oblique reference to a song from Disney's
1937 animated feature film classic, Snow White (trailer). While the film was generally always
credited to David Grant, eventually "veteran British cell animator and
rostrum cameraman Marcus Parker-Rhodes (see: Marx for Beginners
[1979] and Picnic on
Imbrium Beach [1983]) has come forward to claim that this cartoon is
'mostly my work'. He also credits Stan
Hayward as the writer."
Let's hear it for Marilyn Joi.
Between 1972 and 1989, this Babe of
Yesteryear made indelible as well as blink-and-you-miss-her appearances in
a variety of fondly remembered, unjustly forgotten, or gladly overlooked
grindhouse products. But fame is a fickle thing, especially in the nether
regions of exploitation movies, and although she always exuded a memorable
presence and has some notable films in her resume, she never became a
"name" — hell, more people know the name Jean Bell than they do
Marilyn Joi,* though Joi arguably
displayed far greater thespian talent and definitely appeared in a larger
number of noteworthy movies. Indeed, "Joi brought variety and a measure of
depth to her big and small screen performances. She never walked through a role
and she knew the meaning of nuance. She could be a bad girl, a traditional
action film heroine, or a light comedienne of considerable charm. [Bob McCann
in Encyclopedia of African American
Actresses in Film and Television]" To that, we might add that she had
a killer figure and she was sexy, and she had fabulous eyes.
*Perhaps due in part to Ms. Bell's status of being one of the
first Afro-American women to get nekkid in Playboy,
while Ms. Joi only did cheesecake for race-specific publications like Players, "the
Black Playboy". (Although, according to Ms. Joi, "I did do some
[nude] pictures, but they were never published. I'm sure they're floating
around somewhere."**) Players deemed Marilyn "America's
Favorite Black Poster Girl" in 1980 and, two years later, voted her one of
"America's Ten Sexiest Black Women" — and she was.
**Quote taken from an informative interview published in Shock Cinema #16 in 2000, which
can be found at the Internet Archives. We make extensive
use of that interview in the following blog entry. For those of you who don't
know Shock Cinema, it is one
of the best magazines around, particularly for people who read sites like this
one. Check it out, buy an issue — you'll love it!
A beautiful and bubbly Marilyn Joi interviewed:
"Marilyn Joi" was born
22 May 1945 in New Orleans, Orleans Parish, Louisiana, USA. Her full real name
is not general knowledge, though her real first name seems to be
"Mary"; on-screen, she was at times also credited as Tracy King,
Tracy Ann King, T.A. King and even Anita King. She is alive and well and
(unlike us) on twitter. A true Babe of
Yesteryear, her film career was much too short and she is unjustly unknown
— which is why we here at a wasted life have decided to take
one of our typically meandering and unfocused looks at her filmography. (If
it's more meandering and unfocused than usual, well, in this day and age of
corona lockdown we have more time on our hands…)
As always, we make no guarantee
that anything we write is 100% correct (feel free to tell us where we're wrong
— preferably in a non-trolly tone of voice). And if we missed a film, let us
know…
As "George Theakos",
sleaze-film scribe and actor Mike Angel (31 Oct 1926 – 21 Apr 2001) supplied
the screenplay, a sure sign of hilariously trashy and sleazy grindhouse
product. Marilyn Joi, still using the name "Tracy King", is on hand
in this infamous movie playing Clarisse, the wife of the Candy Tangerine Man
when he's off work and being Ron, a caring suburban stud husband and good
provider. Interestingly enough, the dancer on the Candy Tangerine Man poster above changed races for the Tangerine Man release.
Trailer to The Candy Tangerine
Man:
"Director Matt Cimber was no
stranger to the Black action medium, having helmed The Black Six (trailer)
in 1973 and the sexploitation mondo knockoff Black is Beautiful (NSFW
film) in 1970 […]. Candy Tangerine
Man in particular is notable for its gritty style, over-the-top
performances and solid score from the obscure funk group Smoke.* […] Superfly (1972 / trailer) or Foxy Brown (1974 / trailer) this definitely
ain't, as Cimber's film occupies the sleazier side of the Blaxploitation canon
[…] which ran through Times Square grindhouses during the 1970s. Still, Candy Tangerine Man moves along at a
brisk pace, and is handled with enough experience to make it an easy watch for
genre fans who will likely dig the jive quips and fun action set pieces. [10K Bullets]"
*"[…] We finally tracked down the music that's featured in
B-movie Blaxploitation classic Candy
Tangerine Man. It's from quite an easy-to-find funk LP, the self-title
release by Smoke. The music is quality mid-70s dancefloor funk, pretty tight
all through. Mostly vocal, it's not a standard soundtrack record and makes no
mention of the movie on the sleeve, but check out the film then look at the hats
of the guys on the LP sleeve... anyway, 3 tracks from this LP were used in the
movie. Good stuff. [Blaxploitation.com]"
We already took a quick glance
at this Blaxploitation flick way back in 2011 in our long-dead book blog, Mostly Crappy Books, when we, within the context of our review
of Gregg Tyler's "autobiography" The
Joy of Hustling, did a superficial film-by-film look at the movies of Matt
Cimber. There, we wrote:
"I actually remember
watching trailers for this on TV in DC as a kid: I was watching the B&W masterpiece
Night
of the Living Dead (1968 / trailer / full film) on 'Creature
Feature' while babysitting, and I swear this film bought all the advertising
time. The
Amazing World of Cult Movies has this to say about one of Samuel L.
Jackson's favorite films: 'Jaw-dropping Blaxploitation silliness from the
director of Butterfly (1982 / trailer) and the
appalling Witch Who Came from the Sea
(1976 / trailer)
warned 'Git Back Jack — Give Him No Jive ... He Is the Baaad'est Cat in '75.'
He is, of course, Black Shampoo's
John Daniels as The Baron, a married suburban businessman who leads a double
life as a hardboiled pimp with a gold Rolls Royce (the headlights contain hidden
machine-guns). This nonsensical premise is further exacerbated by silly
clothing, tacky hookers, Italian gangsters, and a guy getting his hand chewed
up by a garbage disposal. [...] Not a good movie by any stretch of the
imagination, but some will find it irresistible.' According to Roger Elbert, The Candy Tangerine Man is 'a
singularly unpleasant movie that somehow manages to squeeze a few humorous
scenes in with the gore, the mutilations and the mass executions.' Something
Awful says 'The Candy Tangerine
Man is an amazing showcase of everything embarrassing in the 1970s.' Sounds
very promising, if you ask me. Could this be Matt Cimber's masterpiece?"
The opening credits and scenes of
The
Candy Tangerine Man:
The storyline, as found at the Department of Afro American Research Arts
& Culture: "Sunset Boulevard is a
lucrative place to work for the Black Baron (Jeff Daniels, former owner of Maverick's
Flat), a pimp with a distinctive red and yellow Rolls
Royce and plenty of girls on his books. He don't take no mess from his girls,
his madam or his competitors and viciously defends his patch. First, he
clobbers the Mob who attempt to move in on his patch. Second, he tracks down
one of his girls who runs off with a suitcase full of his cash. Third, he
disposes of two policemen. But by now he knows his pimping days are numbered,
so after a final explosive gun battle he switches to being his alter ego,
mild-mannered businessman Ron who lives out in the leafy suburbs with an
unsuspecting wife and family."
From the soundtrack —
Got a Bad Feeling by Smoke:
Once upon a
time, most people seemed to hate this flick, but nowadays the general
consensus runs more along the lines of what Teenage Frankenstein thinks:
"Matt Cimber's microbudgeted Blaxploitation is more entertaining and funky
than many of the major studio entries into the beloved genre. […] The plot is
route Black action for the time, but it's handled in a satisfactory manner,
hitting all the beats. The dialog is endlessly quotable, and the performances
are charismatic (especially John Daniels in the lead). This has been getting a
lot of rediscovery hype lately, but it earns it."
Clip from
The Candy Tangerine Man:
Indeed, Celluloid Terror gushes, "The
Baron one of the most memorable and most likable characters in all of
exploitation cinema […] and raises The
Candy Tangerine Man from an awesome and frankly pretty well made movie to a
true classic." And Celluloid Terror
is not alone in that opinion: "Candy
Tangerine Man was a sizable hit in 1975 but has fallen into almost total
obscurity since then. A shame, since it's a classic of the genre and
deserves to be discussed along with better remembered entries like Shaft (1971 / theme) and Superfly (1972 / trailer). Of course
those films had major studios behind them, while Candy Tangerine Man was released by the now-defunct Moonstone
Entertainment. [Musings of a Cinema Obsessive]"
As for
Matt Cimber, he gives an interview about the movie at WMFU'S Beware of the Blog, where he
explains his inspiration: "I had a friend – a guy who lived near me
in Beverly Hills. He owned a club on the Sunset Strip called The Body Shop,
which was very famous. It was a burlesque house. I used to go in there at night
after dinner or whatever. […] Occasionally, this guy used to come in, this
African-American who was obviously a pimp. He drove this incredible car. This
was the age of the Sunset Boulevard pimps, y'know? He would come in because he
had a girlfriend. Not a prostitute, but a girlfriend who was a dancer at the
Body Shop. He would come in. Sit. Talk to my friend. What did he talk about?
The stock market. Sometimes, occasionally, politics. But mostly real estate
investments! The guy was incredibly bright. Really bright. It amazed me
because, my friend told me, 'This guy never got out of the fourth grade.' Here
he is working on the streets. I thought, 'Imagine, this guy, if somebody put
him in school – he could be the CEO of a major corporation. Who knows?' […] So
for the movie I did it like... I tried… I made him a pimp who doesn't turn out
new girls."
A.k.a.Texas Layover,
Cathouse
Cowgirls, The
Great Truck Robbery and
possibly The Wild Stewardesses.
Interestingly enough, if not typically enough, the cover art for both Texas Layover and Cathouse Cowgirls sees fit to make the movie look like a white chicks only affair.
Since 1974's The Naughty Stewardesses(also directed by Al Adamson) became one
Independent
International's biggest hits, "it is not too much of a surprise
that Adamson and Sherman soon came up with a sequel, Blazing Stewardesses
(1975), however, the way the film turned out came as a little bit of a
surprise, as for whatever reason, Adamson and Sherman decided to not go the
safe and easy way and make nothing more than a rehash of the earlier film but to
instead turn the film into a loving homage/parody of B-Westerns and serials of
the 1930s. The film to this end features very little in terms of sex (only two
scenes at the beginning) and — besides the stewardesses (Connie Hoffman,
Marilyn Joi, Regina Carrol*) of
course, who do next to no flying in this one — quite a bunch of veteran actors
from the 1930s and 40s, B-movie cowboys Robert Livingston (again) and Don 'Red'
Barry (11 Jan 1912 – 17 July 1980**
of Boss Nigger [1974 / trailer], Walk on the Wild Side [1962 / credit sequence] and Frankenstein 1970 [1958 / trailer]), Yvonne De
Carlo (1 Sept 1922 – 8 Jan 2007, seen below not from the film, of American Gothic [1987 / trailer] and so much
more) and the two surviving Ritz Brothers. Plus, the film used old incidental music by
Lee Zahler that was actually used in serials and B-westerns of the 1930s. This
all sounds pretty exciting of course (at least to a lover of vintage B's), the
end result is less so though, since Adamson is not a versatile enough director
to capture the spirit of the B's of old, and too blunt a director to really get
across the film's parodistic elements. Still, if nothing else, Blazing
Stewardesses was a valiant try, and became quite a success for its
production company Independent
International — maybe also because its title resembled Mel Brooks'
Western-parody success Blazing Saddles (1974 / trailer) ... [(re)search my trash]"
*Astute viewers might notice that of the stewardess from the first
film, only Barbara (Marilyn Joi, credited as "T.A. King") and Debbie
(Connie Hoffman) return; Jane (Sidney Jordan) and Margie (Donna Young) are
gone, replaced by Lori, played by Adamson's wife Regina Carrol (2 May 1943 – 4
Nov 1992).
**"On July 17, 1980, Barry shot himself in the head at his
home, shortly after police had left the residence after investigating a
domestic dispute.
He was estranged at the time from his second wife, Barbara, with whom he had
two daughters. He is interred at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in
the Hollywood Hills of Los Angeles. [Wikipedia]"
Trailer to
Blazing Stewardesses:
"Al Adamson only made movies
like Al Adamson, so why shouldn't his approach to the almighty sequel be like
everyone else's? Whereas 1974's The Naughty Stewardesses was a
soft-core sexcapade, the Blazing Stewardesses follow-up
has next to no nudity and, in a veritable 180˚, what little there is doesn't
come from the leading ladies. [Flick Attack]"
That the movie is aiming for
something different than the T&A comedy of its predecessor is indicated by
the opening title card, which reads: "Dedicated to the Screen's unsung
Directors, Performers and Stuntmen of a bygone era — when Movies entertained
with Simplicity and the world forgot its cares…" Indeed, "in a 26 Sep
2013 interview with the AFI Catalog, writer-producer Samuel M.
Sherman stated that Blazing Stewardesses
was a 'take off' of the Bud Abbott and Lou Costello comedy Ride 'Em Cowboy (1942 / trailer). […] Although
Samuel M. Sherman originally wanted to cast actors Larry Fine, Curly Howard, and
Moe Howard, better known as 'The Three Stooges,' Fine died 24 Jan 1975 before
production began, and Moe Howard became ill and died 4 May 1975. In place of The
Three Stooges, the two living 'Ritz Brothers,' Harry and Jimmy Ritz, were cast
as 'Jimmy' and 'Harry,' respectively. […] Rita
Hayworth was originally offered the role of 'Honey Morgan,' [but] she was
replaced by Yvonne De Carlo due to budget constraints. [AFI]" Blazing Stewardesses was the first feature film appearance of the
Ritz Brothers since 1943's Never a Dull
Moment (trailer);
below, for your viewing pleasure, their public domain guilty pleasure, The Gorilla (1939), with Bela Lugosi:
Full P.D. film —
The Ritz Brothers in The Gorilla (1939):
The AFI also offers a detailed description of the narrative here,
but for the sake of brevity let's look to the DVD Drive-In, which demurely says
that "Adamson definitely made better films, but Regina Carroll and Yvonne
De Carlo fans will enjoy this more than anyone else", has a quick plot
description: "Beautiful stewardesses Debbie (Hoffman), Barbara (Joi, as
T.A. King) and Lori (Carroll) decide to take a vacation from the city life at
the Lucky Dollar Ranch, run by one of Lori's good friends Brewster (Robert
Livingston). However, the ranch is plagued with masked riders terrorizing
Brewster while the girls are invited to spend some time at the neighboring
brothel ranch run by tough spitfire Honey Morgan (Yvonne De Carlo). […] The R
rating is a light one at best, with brief blow-up doll scenes and some goofy
standing-on-heads and cockpit sex. […] Blazing
does pick up during Yvonne's training of the whores-to-be, with the former Mrs.
Munster appearing to really relish this change-of-pace role. The cast is all
game and seem to be having a ball making a legitimate film masquerading as a
sexploitation flick, but it doesn't have enough entertaining moments to keep it
interesting through the epic 95-minute running time."
Indeed The Video Vacuum literally seethes that the movie is "too
much filler and not enough fucking. This might be the first movie that's all
padding. There are long parade sequences, rodeo scenes, and way too much god-awful
comic relief by the supremely annoying Ritz Brothers to make you think this
could've ever been a good flick. Speaking of annoying, Regina Carrol will grate
on your nerves and totally overplays the whole bimbo thing. Because she's the
director's wife though, she gets a shit ton of screen time."
End credits for the movie — for
which we could not find a single positive review anywhere online — include the
credit "Filmed at the White
Sun Guest Ranch, Palm Springs, California." (Image above.) Eventually, The Naughty Stewardesses and Blazing Stewardesses were released as a
double bill.
NaughtyStewardesses and Blazing
Stewardesses
double feature trailer:
Report to the Commissioner
(1975,
dir. Milton Katselas [22 Feb 1933 – 24 Oct 2008])
Aka Operation Undercover. The movie (credit) that got away — when Shock
Cinema asked Marilyn Joi if there were any films she participated in
that they didn't know about, she responded: "I had a part in a movie with
Yaphet Kotto. I forgot the name — it's the one with the stand-off in the
elevator... […] I had a nice scene with Yaphet Kotto in a club, but they cut it
out — probably to put more of the elevator in there, since that was the big
scene." The all-knowing Shock Cinema promptly names this
forgotten film, a New York cop flick that has long since faded into obscurity —
and seeing that some scenes of this mostly shot-on-location movie were shot on
a set in Burbank, it could indeed be the movie. (How many Yaphet Kotto movies
feature an elevator stand-off scene, anyways?)
Trivia: This movie is the screen
debut of Richard Gere, in a small role as a sleazy street pimp (vs. being a
white candy tangerine man). Based on the novel by James Mill, the screenplay
was written by Abby Mann and Ernest Tidyman, the latter of whom also did the
screenplay to High Plains Drifter
(1973 / trailer) and
the original Shaft (1971 / trailer).
"Back […] when I lived in
Manhattan, I was friendly with an NYPD homicide detective who was also a movie
buff, and he hipped me to this little-seen drama, praising it as one of the
most accurate depictions he'd ever seen about how ugly the gamesmanship within
a police force can get. And, indeed, even though Report to the Commissioner is fictional — it's based on a novel by
James Mills — the picture radiates authenticity. Extensive location photography
captures the dirty heat of summertime New York City; intense performances burst
with streetwise attitude; and the vicious storyline is driven by cynicism,
duplicity, and politics. Told in flashback following some sort of terrible
clusterfuck of a shootout at Saks Fifth Avenue, the picture reveals how an
ambitious undercover detective and a rookie investigator cross paths, with
tragic results. [Every 70s Movie]"
Trailer to
Report to the
Commissioner:
The plot, from TV Guide: "Police Commissioner Stephen
Elliott gives underling Captain Strichter (Edward Grover) the assignment of
finding out why Chicklette (Susan Blakely), an undercover police officer, was
killed when the apartment she shared with narcotics drug czar Henderson (Tony King)
was raided. In a flashback we learn that Bo Lockley (Michael Moriarty of Q [1982]),
a young detective, was on the case and didn't know Blakely was working for the
cops. The investigation is bogged down in a series of bureaucratic maneuvers,
and the film becomes more of a character study of the men behind the badges as
we meet dedicated cops Capt. D'Angelo (Hector Elizondo) and Lt. Hanson (Michael
McGuire). Chief Perna (Dana Elcar) leads the undercover narcotics squad, and Asst.
D.A. Jackson (William Devane) is one of those barracuda prosecutors who will
stop at nothing to get a conviction. Lockley has been teamed with Richard
"Crunch" Blackstone (Yaphet Kotto), his senior in the department, and
the two men try their best to do their jobs but are detoured at every
crossroads by the politics of the department."
"Report to the Commissioner usually gets lumped in with the plethora
of 70s cop films, but I viewed it as a neo-noir. It's structure tells the tale
mainly in flashback, from the participating character's differing perspective,
and is dark as hell. I'm sure co-screenwriters Abby Mann and Ernest Tidyman
were well aware of what they were doing: both men were former Oscar winners […]
familiar with the conventions of the genre. The solid cast features a
powerhouse collection of 70s character actors, led by Michael Moriarty's
patented over-the-edge performance as protagonist Bo Lockley. [Through a Shattered Lens]"
"Although Moriarity puts in
a good performance, it's really the city that's the star here. You can just
feel the oppressive, sensory overwhelming nature of Times Square circa 1972.
It's a land of sleazy movie theaters, overwhelming crowds, and strange
characters. [Mystery File]"
Ilsa, Harem Keeper of the Oil Sheiks
(1976, dir. Don
Edmonds)
Ilsa, Harem Keeper of the Oil
Sheiks is the second film in
a classic exploitation franchise, and it like, the franchise itself, keeps
rearing its wonderfully filthy head time and again in our R.I.P. and Babes of
Yesteryear features.
As we mention recently in Part IX of our slobbering Babes of Yesteryear gaze at the films of
the Great Uschi, Ilsa, Harem Keeper of the Oil Sheiks is the first follow-up film to Ilsa,
She Wolf of the S.S. (1975, see Uschi Part
VIII); it has the same director at its helm, Don Edmonds (1 Sept 1937 –
30 May 2009), and of course the same Ilsa (Dyanne Thorne), despite the fact
that she dies at the end of the first movie. David
F. Friedman, the producer of the first Ilsa movie, however, took a fly on
this one. As scriptwriter Langston Stafford never scripted a film before or
after this entry of the series, we assume the name is a pseudonym. Abe Books is currently offering the
final draft of the film's script for sale (a steal at £786.89,
but only for Abe Books), and reveals some facts in the description: "Uncredited
producer Don Carmody's working script,
with his ownership name in holograph ink on the first leaf. Notations in
holograph pencil and ink throughout by Carmody and (more extensively) by the
script supervisor, presumably Lynne Twentyman, on both rectos and versos.
Twentyman worked on the film under the pseudonym Lynn Ward. Carmody […] was set
to produce this film, here under its original title, The Oil Sheiks, but director Edmonds received the credit (as
William J. Brady). Thus, a document containing early evidence of the
pre-production planning that went into the film. Exploitation at its finest
[…]"
The art for the German poster
above was done by the great (and totally unknown) George Morf, a.k.a. Georges
Morf, a Swiss graphic artist who often did the film posters for the great
Euro-sleazemonger Erwin
C. Dietrich (4 Oct 1930 – 15 March 2018).
Ilsa, Harem Keeper of the Oil
Sheiks is rated "Worthless" by The
Worldwide Celluloid Massacre, which also deigns to say "all in
all, a much campier and less shocking sequel that is even entertaining in its
sleazy way but will only to appeal to... well you know who you are." (Yes,
we do.) The Department of Afro-American Research Arts and Culture disagrees
slightly, as they say "The second film in the
notorious Ilsa series, Harem Keeper
is as equally shocking and controversial as its reviled predecessor."
But to get back to the Great Uschi
for a moment, she has a bigger role in this movie than she did in the first film:
as the kidnapped Scandinavian actress Inga Lindström, she even has a lesbo love
scene (above) with Velvet (Marilyn Joi) — or maybe with Satin (Tany Boyd of Black Shampoo [1976 / trailer]). Truth be
told, the two do a very convincing Doublemint Twin look in this movie, which
makes them a bit difficult to differentiate unless seen onscreen in full — but that's Marilyn Joi to the left below.
The beautiful Haji, who like
Uschi was also in the first Ilsa film, is in this one as well — that's her
bloody face in the poster directly below — which is why we took a look at the
movie at her R.I.P.
Career Review we did in 2013. Credited as "Haji Cat", she plays
"Alina Cordova" — you see her getting tortured in this film's NSFW
trailer below and on the Japanese poster above. Her character is a spying belly
dancer who first gets her beautiful love pillows crushed [below, with Marilyn
helping to apply the pressure] when she is tortured for information about her
unknown contractor and is then later killed by an exploding diaphragm...
As Dr
Gore astutely says: "Ilsa, Harem Keeper of the Oil Sheiks
promises nasty sleaze and does not disappoint. Every other scene had either
blood or breasts or both. It's a great exploitation movie. I recommend
it."
The NSFW trailer to
Ilsa, Harem Keeper of the Oil Sheiks:
We here at a wasted life saw Ilsa,
Harem Keeper of the Oil Sheiks a decade or two ago in a double feature with
Ilsa the Tigress of Siberia [1977 / trailer], but to tell the
truth we really don't remember anything about either movie... in fact, we saw
the movie so long ago that when we saw it, we didn't even know who Marilyn Joi
was, much less notice her specifically. Not to say that we didn't notice the
two lithe, black sister-like amazons that kicked butt and killed and maimed and
did the nasty with each other and others — but just like with everything else
in the movie, we no longer actually remember everything they do or what happens
to them, much less when or why or how — although one really doesn't have to be
a rocket scientist to guess (correctly) that they both die in the end. It's an
Ilsa film, for Christ's sake — what else would happen to them?
The plot, as described in
reduction at Cool Ass Cinema: "Ilsa (Thorne)
is operating a slavery ring in the Middle East serving El Sharif (Jerry
Delony), a maniacal oil sheik who has usurped his young nephew as ruler. Some of
Ilsa's kidnapped clientele consist of well-known and wealthy personalities.
[Colleen Brennan plays an American millionaire's daughter.] This attracts the
attention of the United States Secret Service, who send spies to bust up the
criminal activities within El Sharif's harem. One of them is an American
diplomat (Max Thayer of Planet of the
Dinosaurs [1977 / "trailer"])
whom Ilsa becomes infatuated. She refuses to kill him against El Sharif's
orders and brings about her own humiliating torture. The slaves soon revolt
culminating in a violent confrontation against El Sharif and his soldiers."
Ms. Brennan — seen to your right
above with Uschi to your left — when asked in an interview at Rock!
Shock! Pop! about her appearance in this Ilsa movie and the first one,
both films she regrets having been in, disingenuously states, "Okay, here's
the rule of thumb I developed too late: Never be in a movie that strives to
attract an audience with whom you would not choose to share a theater."
Haji is also relatively circumspect about the movie when talking toShock Cinema,
saying: "I will limit myself as far as doing certain things, and some of
the stuff they did in that film was a little too funky for me. I liked my part,
but I don't think I did a very good job with it."
Marilyn Joi, a person who is
above sticking her nose in the air in retrospect, also speaks of the movie in
her interview with Shock Cinema, where she reveals
herself still miffed at how her big scene [when Satin is killed] was thwarted:
"There's a scene in that movie — when we shot it, I had people crying on
the set! Crying! In a B-movie! But when they edited the film, they chopped it
up so much that they ruined it. Yes, but it wasn't just Tanya dying. I thought
about my kid, I thought about my sister — I really put a lot into that scene,
but they cut it all up. I run toward Tanya, and they cut away. I pick her up,
and they cut away. Instead of letting me run through the room, they cut to all
these other people shooting off guns! That's when I learned how important
editing is. It can make or break you."
The infamous and popular Dyanne
"Ilsa" Thorne, by the way, went on to become a minster named Dyanne
Maurer who, with her husband Howard Maurer — the couple appeared in five films
together: this Ilsa film here, Ilsa the Tigress (1977 / trailer), Wanda, the
Wicked Warden (1977 / trailer),
the classic Harry
Novak production Wham! Bam! Thank You, Spaceman! (1975 / trailer) and all of two seconds in Franc
Roddam's Liebestod segment of Aria (1987 / trailer) — conducted wedding ceremonies in Vegas. She died
this year on the 28th of January.
Mansion of
the Doomed
(1976, dir. Michael Pataki)
Marilyn Joi has a speaking part
as Miss Mathews in this fun slice of grindhouse trash a.k.a. Massacre Mansion, The Terror of Dr. Chaney, Eyes, Eyes of Dr. Chaney and House of Blood. A Charles Band production — his first
"official" project, as he tends to ignore and deny his lost first
film, The Last Foxtrot in Burbank(1973)* — Mansion was one of the
many films confiscated in Great Britain during their idiotic "video
nasty" panic. Like Jesús Franco's earlier film The Awful Dr. Orloff
(1962 / trailer) and Franco later
Faceless (1987 / trailer), Mansion of
the Doomed looks to be yet another fun and trashy take on the B&W
classic, Les yeux sans visage
/ Eyes Without a Face (1960 / trailer), only instead
of faceless faces, it's got eyeless faces.
*"[Last Foxtrot in
Burbank] is obliterated [from history] for good reason! I was involved very
peripherally. In some cases my name was attached or wasn't attached. So
somewhere in the mix I did have some involvement in the movie and I'm glad if
it's substantially erased because it was just something I helped someone out
with and the next thing you know it somehow got stuck to me as a movie I made,
which is not the case, nor did I direct it or anything. So the first real movie
that I put my name on officially, that was my first genre film — I pulled in
people who were friends — was: I want to say The Eyes of Dr Chaney
but it really was released as Mansion of the Doomed. [Charles
Band @ Cult Films & the People Who Make Them]"
The original publicity material for Foxtrot
found Temple of Schlock, however, has
Band's name all over it. Perhaps the man doth protest too much? Indeed,
according to what John Carpenter, the editor of Foxtrot, says in the interview found
here, Band very much had his fingers in the Foxtrot pie.
Director Michael Pataki (16 Jan
1938 – 15 April 2010) was primarily active as an ubiquitous actor — see: Dead & Buried (1981, w/ James
Farentino), The Baby (1973 / trailer), The Cut-Throats (1969, with the Great
Uschi) & The Dirt Gang
(1972, with the Great
Uschi), The
Pink Angels (1971), the Henning Schellerup anti-classics The Black Bunch (1972 / trailer) and Sweet Jesus, Preacherman (1973 / trailer) and so much
more— whose only other feature film directorial credit is everyone's favorite
soft-core version of Cinderella
(1977 / trailer). The
screenplay is from Frank Ray Perilli (30 Aug 1925 – 8 Mar 2018), the co-writer
of Alligator
(1980), who began his career in films as an occasional actor (for example, in Carnival Rock [1957] with Dick
Miller and Invasion of the Star
Creatures [1962 / trailer])
before taking up scriptwriting with The Doberman Gang (1972 / trailer).
Mansion of the Doomed
has long been on our "To See" list, and not just because Marilyn
"Miss Mathews" Joi is in it somewhere, but we have yet to get around
to it. So we cannot say where, when, why or how "Miss Mathews" shows
up — regrettably, not a single online source we looked at does so, either. Not
even the AFI Catalog, which otherwise
offers a long and detailed
plot description. So we really don't know: does she or does she not keep
her beautiful eyes? She is not anywhere in the trailer, in any event.
When it comes to her experience
while making this film, however, in her interview with Shock
Cinema Marilyn Joi comments that "[Richard Baseheart] grabbed me
around the chest every chance he got! (Laughs) There's a scene where he grabs
me, and we must've shot that scene ten times! He kept goofing it up so he could
grab me around the chest!" (Obviously enough, Richard Baseheart was a
boobs-man.)
Kindertrauma, which says that one
must "offer some amount of applause to Mansion simply for being consistently grim and
unapologetically gruesome", has a short plot description: "Richard Baseheart
(31 Aug 1914 – 17 Sept 1984) plays Dr. Leonard Chaney who, due to shitty
driving, causes his daughter Nancy (Trish Stewart) to lose her eyesight.
Feeling like a schmuck he decides with the help of his loyal wife Katherine (Gloria
Grahame [28 Nov 1923 – 5 Oct 1981]) to drug his daughter's fiancé (Lance
Henriksen), surgically remove his eyeballs, stick them in his daughter's head
and then keep the poor eyeless guy locked in a cell in the basement. The new
peeper plan works out super for a while but then fails, so Chaney tries again
with another victim and then another. The basement begins to fill with eyeless
prisoners and his daughter's face begins to look like Scrapple and everybody
gets trapped in an unhealthy eyeball operation loop because the Doctor refuses
to abide by the laws of his profession: 'First, do no harm' and 'Second, do no
drugging, eye theft and prisoner keeping'!"
Silver Emulsion "definitely
recommend [Mansion of the Doomed] to
B-movie fans", saying it's "a movie that just gets more and more
fucked up as it goes on […] its tortured path of eye trauma. It's not going to
win any awards (even the genre ones), but it definitely packs in a lot of
twisted, fucked-up thrills for those in the audience that can find
entertainment in such things. […] Let's not gloss over the FX though, because
they're pretty fucking good. Anything involving surgery or the eyes is always
going to get me squirming, so I was wriggling around like a worm in a bird's
mouth through every appropriate sequence. During the surgery scenes, there's
some monitor footage of syringes puncturing eyes that looks so real I'm unable
to tell if it was actual surgery footage or fabrications. Pulling the eyes from
the subject's face was definitely fake, but it looked incredibly good. The
zombie-like blind captives in the basement also feature some great makeup that
makes it look as if they don't have any eyes. The faded, tired print of the
movie only adds to the creepiness of the film, giving it a taboo, snuff film
quality."
Words of the Master, however, finds
that "Mansion of the Doomed is
a little on the pedestrian side": "Patakis isn't particularly good at
building tension or suspense, and, for the most part the movie is kinda just
there. Thankfully, it is pretty short and goes by fairly quickly. It's enough
to keep you interested in what is going on, and what to know how it's all gonna
end. It's really aided by a cast that is way better than this movie probably
deserves. […] It's made watchable thanks to some solid acting and good gore.
Coupled with a short running time and a suitably nasty ending, it turns out to
be an overall decent little movie. So long as they don't expect a masterpiece
or anything original […], fans of gore, mad doctors, 70s cheapo horror, and/ or
Lance Henriksen will be in for a little bit of a treat."
The advertisement above, by the
way, comes from the fun but lackadaisically maintained blogspot Groovy Doom. The triple feature
screened at Lakeshore
and Washington Drive-ins
was one of fun if typically thrown-together exploitation fare: the grimness of Mansion teamed with the cheesy fun of The Giant Spider Invasion (1975 / trailer) and the Euro-Eroticism of the softcore House of 1,000
Pleasures — the last, we would guess, most likely being Max Pécas' Club privé
pour couples avertis (1974 a.k.a. House of 1,000 Pleasures) and not Antonio Margheriti's
Finalmente le mille e una notte (1972, full film in Italian, a.k.a. House of 1,000
Pleasures).
Black Samurai
(1976, dir. Al Adamson)
We looked
at this flick back in 2013 in Part II of
our R.I.P. Carrier Review of Jim Kelly, where it is listed as a film from 1977
(since then, a Detroit screening in 1976 seems to have come to light, making it
a 1976 release).
Trailer to
Black Samurai:
Marilyn
Joi has pretty big part in the movie as the appropriately named bad gal Synne,
and was even in charge of costumes. As the bad gal, she is not only seen in the
trailer — "I like to think of you as my white knight, baby" — but
they even show how she dies. (Pretty stupid of the trailer cutter, if you ask
us.)
Seven
years ago we wrote: Also known as Black Terminator
and The Freeze Bomb. So, what's left for an actor after an Oscar
Williams* film? Well, how about an
Al Adamson movie? We love Al Adamson movies — they're absolutely terrible!
(See, for example, our review of his instant non-classic Dracula
vs. Frankenstein [1971].) If you don't know Adamson's films, believe us,
they are true eye-openers. Yes, Virginia, you do not need any notable
directorial talent to become a director, you just need to be an auteur.
* Kelly's previous film was Hot Potato (1976),
directed by Oscar Williams, who also wrote Kelly's 1974 movie, Black Belt
Jones (see Jim Kelly, Part I). There is a reason Williams hasn't directed
a movie since his 1978 anti-drug disasterpiece, Death Drug. He wasn't an
auteur.
It is literally impossible to
talk of the great filmmaker [Adamson] without making some mention of his
memorable (if tragic) demise, but we've done it so often we'll let Teleport City
tell the tale: "In June of 1995, legendary (some would counter with
'infamous') b-movie kingpin Al Adamson was murdered by a handyman
he'd contracted to complete some work on his ranch. The body was discovered
entombed beneath a newly poured concrete slab that occupied the space where
Adamson's hot tub once stood. The producer-director's disappearance piqued the
curiosity of friends, and one in particular became suspicious of the concrete
slab, noting that Al loved his hot tub perhaps more than anything else he owned
and never would have had it removed. And indeed that's where they found his
body. The handyman, Fred Fulford,
was arrested and, in a trial that dragged on until March, 2000, finally
convicted and sentenced to 25-to-life."
Adamson's flick here, by the way,
isn't one of his many cut-and-paste jobs but is based on the first of a
series of pulp novels by the Afro-American author Marc Olden, who died in 2003,
featuring Robert Sand, the "Black Samurai" of the title. [Cost big
bucks on ebay nowadays.] Olden's Samurai series lasted eight titles between '74
and '75, the first title [image below] of which is the basis of Adamson's film adaptation
here.*
*We based this statement on the movie's Wikipedia entry; the imdb
simply say the movie is based on the book series, but the Holy Temple of Schlock unequivocally
states that the movie is based on the sixth book of the series, The Warlock (cover below). The
plot of the book as found at Glorious Trashwould indicate that there are enough similarities between the book
and film that the Temple is right. Glorious Trash also notes: "Marc Olden
churned out this entire series [of eight books] within one year; a staggering
feat by any means, but even more staggering when you realize that Olden's
writing is heads and tails better than just about any other writing you will
encounter in this genre. I mean, there's character development, there's good
dialog, there's inventive setpieces."
Black Samurai was
Adamson's fifth but perhaps only second "true" attempt at Blaxploitation.
(His first, Mean Mother [1974 / trailer, see Joi Part I], is actually a re-cut
conversion of León Klimovsky's Run for Your Life / El hombre que vino
del odio [1971]; his second, Dynamite Brothers [1972 / trailer], is more a
cheesy multiculti [Chino-Afro-American] chopsocky exploiter than straight Blaxploitation;
and his Uncle Tom's Cabin [1976] is [another re-cut film and] actually
more a B&D/S&M movie aimed towards those who like seeing naked, buff
Afro-Americans get punished.* But
just before Black Samurai, Adamson made Black Heat [1976], a
"serious" attempt at true Blaxploitation.) *Like Mean Mother,
Adamson's Uncle Tom's Cabin is a re-cut
of another movie from Europe, in this case of Géza von Radványi's 1965 version
starring Herbert
Lom. More on the movie, which also includes new scenes with Joi, is found further
below.
Film
Father, which if of the opinion that "everything in Black
Samurai is second-rate", explains the plot as follows: "Special
agent Robert Sand (Jim Kelly) is asked by the CIA to save his girlfriend Toki
(Essie Lin Chia) after she's kidnapped by a voodoo cult led by the evil Janicot
(Bill Roy). It turns out Toki is also the daughter of a top Eastern ambassador,
and Janicot's ransom demand is top-secret information for a new weapon, the
'freeze bomb.' Sand's search takes him from Hong Kong to California to Miami,
facing bad men, bad women, and bad animals (Janicot's pet is a killer
vulture!)." Of the film's sexpot Synne, otherwise known as Marilyn Joi,
with whom Sand (Kelly) is playing tennis at the start of the film, Adventures
in Nerdliness says: "I only knew about [her] from one thing; the Cleopatra
Schwartz faux trailer in Kentucky Fried Movie (1977 / trailer). Turns out she
did a lot more films. [...] She also made many appearances in the men's
magazine Players."
To add to what we wrote back in
2013, in her interview with Shock Cinema, when it comes to Black Samurai Marilyn Joi said,
"[…] I liked doing Synne the most. That was only supposed to be a little
part originally, the bedroom scene. Al talked to me right before we did that —
he said, 'Marilyn, behave yourself. This is Jim Kelly, he's the star, and don't
you forget that now.' I said, 'Oh, Jim Kelly, OK!' And Jim was supposed to kill
me right after the bedroom scene, but I said to him, 'Jim, my goodness! What
will this look like to your friends? You beat me, you have sex with me, and you
kill me? What's the matter with you?' So he went to Al and said, 'Y'know, it
doesn't seem right that I kill her. I don't want to kill women.' (Laughs) So
they wrote all this other stuff for me to do, and Synne got more work! Pretty
clever of me, I must say! Oh, I loved [playing the villain]! I just didn't like
what they did at the end, when I got stabbed and went 'Oooooh!' I've always
found that when the good guys get stabbed in movies, they scream because
they're fighting to save their lives. But when the villain gets stabbed, it's a
surprise — 'I got stabbed? How dare you stab me!' So I just stood there with my
mouth open, stunned, not making a sound and when they overdubbed that 'Oooooh.'
it really bugged me."
The ephemerality of architecture. All three of the Jacksonville, Florida, movie theatres in the advert above no longer exist. Lake Forrest Drive-in was demolished an replaced by a Baptist Church (Peace Missionary Baptist Church @ 1759 Rowe Avenue), Norwood Twins stands empty in a run-down shopping plaza, and the Center, picture below, perhaps the only true architectural / historical loss of the three, was demolished in 2002 after it collapsed.
Black Samurai, possibly as to be expected, has been in development
hell since 2017, when it
was announced that rapper turned actor Common would be the
new Black Samurai in a TV series. By now, development hell has perhaps turned into rejected for further development, but if not, wouldn't
it be grand if they fit in Marilyn Joi somewhere?
By the way, something we only discovered / realized long after we put our R.I.P. Career Review of Jim "Hubba-Hubba" Kelly online is that his earliest known [un-credited lead] film appearance (to date, not yet even listed on imdb) is in our Short Film of the Month for Feb 2012, Carl Fick's B&W anti-drug short from 1969, A Day in the Death of Donny B.
Uncle Tom's Cabin
(1976, "dir." Al Adamson)
A.k.a White Trash Woman & Cry
Sweet Revenge. Based on the novel by Harriet Beecher Stowe, this version of
the tale was "directed" by Al Adamson: seeing a possible financial
gain in the popularity of the TV miniseries Roots, Independent-International
took the German production of Uncle
Tom's Cabin (or, rather, of Onkel
Toms Hütte)starring
Herbert Lom anddirected by
Hungary-born Géza von Radványi (26 Sept 1907 – 27 Nov 1986) and then recut it,
adding 40 new minutes of new material.
John Kitzmiller, the guy
playing the film's titular character, Uncle Tom, had already been dead for more
than a decade by the time Adamson's version hit the grindhouses — indeed, Uncle Tom's Cabin version one and two
ended up being Kitzmiller's second-to-last and last film(s). (Ditto for Olive
Moorefiled, who plays Cassie in both films — though she did occasionally appear
on TV between the two versions.)
One of John Kitzmiller's more
interesting film projects — ignoring, of course, Dr No (1962 / trailer)
— is Àkos Ráthonyi's gothic-style krimi, Der
Fluch der grünen Augen (1964), a.k.a. Night
of the Vampires & Cave of the
Living Dead.
Full film —
Cave of the Living
Dead:
Prior to Adamson's reworked
version, the original got a rerelease as Cassy,
where it was screened at Chicago's Woods Theatre, one of
many former movie palaces that are no more.
Over at our 2012 R.I.P. Review of Herbert Lom, we wrote:
"Among other fun projects by Hungarian director Géza von Radványi
are his remake of Mädchen in Uniform (1958 / German trailer – set
to the theme of Hawaii 5-0!!!) as well as three films he helped write,
Walerian Borowczyk's Eurotrash Lulu (1980 / full film) – a
remake of Pabst's classic silent film starring Louise Brooks, Pandora's Box
(1929 / fabulous full film) – and the two trashy Euro-horrors Parapsycho – Spektrum der Angst
(1975 / trailer), which in classic exploitation film fashion features a real autopsy
scene, and Naked Massacre (1976 / full film). His big
budget version of Uncle Tom's Cabin may have been mostly sincere, but
many years after its initial release it was briefly re-released in 1977
on the grindhouse circuit as Cassy. [Then,] to quote Temple of Schlock, whence the poster [advertisement
above] comes, "The G-rated movie was subsequently acquired by distributor
Samuel Sherman, who hired Al Adamson [the director of Dracula Vs Frankenstein (1970)] to shoot new sex and violence
scenes for an R-rated Mandingo-inspired re-release in 1977 under the
title Uncle Tom's Cabin and later as White Trash Woman [and Cry Sweet Revenge]."
Herbert Lom plays the bad guy, Simon Legree. Needless to say, no matter which
version of the film you see, they are all more salacious than the original
book."
German trailer to the first release,
song by
the great Eartha Kitt:
But to get to Adamson' version
(the earlier re-release, Cassy,
without new material by Adamson was presented by Charles E. Johnson*): "This is the 1965 version with
40 minutes of newly shot footage added and has to be seen as a new and
different movie that focuses on exploitation, violence and nudity. [Mubi]"
*We were unable to find confirmation that the two are one and the
same person, but a "Charles Eric Johnson" wrote Adamson's Hammer (1972, see Part I) and his version of Mean Mother (1974, see Part I).
In his book True Songs of Freedom: Uncle Tom's Cabin in Russian Culture and Society,
John Mackay writes that the Sam Sherman release "added a separate
narrative involving slave traders, rape, interracial romance and a culminating
scene of slave vengeance (shot by exploitation legend Al Adamson)." Although
only Adamson's film heralds a "Presented by Kroger Babb", Mackay
claims that the version released by Johnson and the one augmented by Adamson were
both the same 120-minute cut by the legendary Kroger Babb (the original
German film being 170 minutes long).
Few have seen Adamson's version
and thought it fit to write about; one of the few that has is Vomit Bag Video, which was thrilled enough to write [the stars
are ours]: "Incredibly RARE 1977 ALTERNATE UNCUT print of the Kroger Babb
60s race-drama with Herbert Lom, but with special ADDED 70s FOOTAGE shot by AL
ADAMSON, showing sadistic rapes, beatings, and tortures by a gang of crazed
rednecks!! They rape a black slave-girl in front of her husband and a bunch of
chained slaves, then chase after an escaped slave who miraculously (!) survives
being shot in the water by his evil master, Simon Legree (LOM). They catch up
with him, tho, call him 'Mr. Legree's FUCKIN' N*****', beat him, throw him on
the ground, and decide to do a DELIVERANCE-number on him, by RAPING HIM in the
woods! One of the hicks comments, 'Better hope you don't catch nothin' from
that n*****!', and the other replies, 'Couldn't be any worse than what you
caught from those SHEEP!' They then tie him to a tree and pour scalding hot tar
on top of his head and naked torso, in a brutal, sick scene! Believe me, the Al
Adamson footage makes ALL the difference in enjoying this piece of cinematic
trash!"
Marilyn Joi, in her interview
with Shock Cinema, says "Oh, I remember [Uncle Tom's Cabin]! […] There was no glamour there! That was real
swamp water! That was really slimy stuff! Where did that movie go to, anyway?
[…] I'd like to see it, though. I got raped in that movie. […] No, of course I
don't want to see myself get raped! (Laughs) I want to remember how I let it
happen! I was a slave, and I think I ran away and got caught or no, maybe I was
raped, and then I ran away... "
