Special tnanks to Cartoon Research for introducing us to this short.
Film, like life, is an ephemeral thing. It's there,
and then it isn't. Everything is but dust
in the wind. But unlike life, sometimes, if rarely, a film
comes back — as happened, aptly enough, with Frankenstein
(1910), our Short Film of the Month
last month. Sometimes, however, when films come back, they're different,
something is missing…
And that is the case of this extremely obscure stop-animation
short, now known as Dolly Daisy in
Hearts and Flowers, which resurfaced somewhere along the way but without
its original soundtrack. Nowadays, the short can be found online underscored
with different aural treatments, none of which are the original. (Personally,
we find the version found
here has the more-appropriate "borrowed"
soundtrack, but the version we embed below has much clearer visuals.) This oddly
uncomfortable short here was released by Warner Bros. in 1930 as part of its
Vitaphone series ("Vitaphone production reel #1136"), and as with
many of its Vitaphone ilk, the accompanying disk is lost. ("Vitaphone was a sound film system used
for feature films and nearly 1,000 short subjects made by Warner Bros. and its
sister studio First National from 1926 to 1931. […] The soundtrack was not
printed on the film itself, but issued separately on phonograph records. The
discs […] would be played on a turntable physically coupled to the projector
motor while the film was being projected. [Wikipedia]")
It is entirely possible that once upon a time the
short even had spoken dialogue, but the lack of that in no way hampers the
overall effect of the short. Dolly Daisy in
Hearts and Flowers is simply an oddly unnerving, vexatious, and
disturbing short that sits smack dab in the middle of a dreamscape one step
away from being a nightmare. "Love never looked so creepy. […] Just a fun,
weird little short to make you ponder just why all children's entertainment
pre-Willy Wonka seemed to be designed to scare the ever-loving shit out its intended
audience. [Content Party & Review]"
Dolly Daisy in
Hearts and Flowers:
It is arguable that Dolly Daisy in Hearts and Flowers was made for kiddies, as it is a
bit sexually suggestive for a pre-peachfuzz audience. The plot involves a love
triangle: two guys, both with voyeuristic tendencies — But then, what man
doesn't have voyeuristic tendencies? — vying for the attentions of a fickle
female. Along the way, they both carelessly cause physical harm to hapless
third persons (the mother [?] and a somewhat stereotypical Black fisherman) and
the gal floats to the moon… All the characters are dolls, and even in ancient B&W
they exude a close kinship to Chucky and other evil dolls of his kind.
Whether the film was truly made in 1930, the year
commonly attributed, is possibly open to question — as the blogspot The Boundaries of Fantasy
indicated way back in 2009: the puppet used for the sailor is the same
"Mugsy" (a.k.a. "Mugzee") puppet used in a short entitled Cracked Ice, which, depending on the
source you read, was made in either 1917
or 1922.
So, while it is entirely possible that the film was rereleased with a new date
added, it could also be that the Mugzee puppet was simply reused for the film. It
is doubtful that the short's producer/director Howard S. Moss (9 June 1881 – July
[possibly 30 June] 1964) treated his dolls with anything less than TLC, going
by whatAFI mentions in
their entry on Moss's lost, 50-minute
human & doll film, The Dream Doll
(1917): "Moss was credited with designing and building some of the
fourteen-inch dolls used in the film, while many others were made to order by
European craftspeople; his collection was valued at several thousand dollars."
According to the World Catalog,
there seems to be a 1917 Howard S. Moss short entitled Dolly Doings, which seems to have had nothing to do with the
little girls' book of almost the same title by E. Patterson from 1880. We doubt that it
is the same film as Hearts and Flowers,
if only because there is a Vitaphone release from 1930, #1065, also from Moss,
entitled Dolly Daisy in Dizzy Doings–
a film not yet added to his filmography. But assuming that the 1917 & 1930 Dizzy Doings are the same short,
credence is given to the hypothesis that H&F
is likewise older.
Moss's accepted known filmography is spotty, at best,
with many films lost or forgotten. Going by Loyd Bruce Holman's Puppet Animation in the Cinema: History and
Technique (pub. 1975), some of Moss's titles lost to time include: Dunkling of the Circus (1917), Goldilocks and the Three Bears (1917), In the Jungle (1917), Jimmy Gets the Pennant (1917), A Kitchen Romance (1917), The Magic Pig (1917), Midnight Frolic (1917), and Out in the Rain (1917). The First Century of Cinema,
a website only open to educational institutions (as of July 2021) — and that
gave us all the dates to the films listed above — would add the following shorts: The Beauty Contest (1921), The Dollies of 1917 (1917), The Dream Doll (1917), School Days (1917), A Trip to the Moon (1917) and possibly The Moss Doll (1930).
Most, if not all, Motoy (a.k.a. Mo-Toy) Films seem to have been distributed by the Peter Pan Film Corporation.
An online search reveals other Mo-Toy titles as well, at
varied locations, but no single list that includes them all, and often Moss's
animator gets the credit. Take a look at this one, for example, Buzz Saws and Dynamite, starring Mugzee [aka Mugsy],
one of Dolly's suitors, and credited to Charles Bennes, the animator of Dolly Daisy in Hearts and Flowers(and Dizzy Doings, for that matter). (For
more info on Buzz Saws, go here.)
Or how about Mugzee in this surreal short with sound, Mr Mugzee in Televisiona.k.a.
Television Romance, likewise credited to the unknown Charles Bennes.
Considering how early the duo practised the art of stop motion animation, and the extent of their (mostly lost) incredibly strange output, it would seem to us that they and their work are unjustly forgotten.
Absolutely nothing can be found online about Charles Bennes, but
only a little bit more can be uncovered about Howard S. Moss a.k.a. Howard Moss
a.k.a. Stanley Moss a.k.a. Howard Stanley Moss. He was born in Chicago, where
he ran Motoy Films and, in 1902, married Florence Adele Seavey, with whom he
may have had two
(twins) or three
children, and died in NYC in 1964. "Animated puppets, not drawings, were
the staple of Chicago-based Howard Moss's films. These juvenile shorts
frequently featured caricatures of screen stars like Mary Pickford and Charlie
Chaplin. [SilentFilmOrg]"
BTW: The Mugzee puppet is believed by some to be a caricatured of silent film star
Ben Turpin [19 Sept 1869 – 1 July 1940]. (Q only knows who Dolly should be. Colleen Brennan, maybe?) Whoever Mugzee is based on, it definitely seems to us that Mugzee himself inspired another famous face familair to us all:
This Netfux
production is a blood- and death- and sex-drenched Polish black comedy that is
more enjoyable than it probably should be. If there is a core lesson to be learnt
from the narrative of All My Friends Are
Dead, then it is surely that one should not have hot, orgasmic sex while
holding a loaded gun in one's hand (or, in turn, you shouldn't orgasm a babe if
she's holding a loaded gun). For it is with the scene in which this transpires
that the dominoes (as in bodies) begin to fall, one after the other, resulting
in the resolution whence this film takes its name. In that sense, the movie
doesn't really have a plot: it simply starts with everyone dead and then shows
how it happened.
Polish Trailer to
Wszyscy moi przyjaciele nie zyja:
All My Friends Are Dead opens the morning after a catalytic New
Year's party in which all the friends die, and playfully enough the movie's
title is not delivered in writing but by the spoken words of the sole survivor
as she is carried out on a stretcher, her neck obviously broken. This prefatory
scene also reveals that Polish cops, with or without sticky fingers, seem to be
about as incompetent as American cops are willing to kill black people. But not
too much time is spent on the mildly critical presentation of the capabilities
of Polish cops; instead, after a quick review of diverse dead individuals and
the pile of corpses as a whole, the movie quickly moves to the past to reveal
just how the swinging private party of twens — a party not all that different
from millions around the world on any given New Year's night — became a house
full of dead people.
For the opening party scene of his feature film
directorial debut, the director and screenwriter Jan Belcl resorts to an extremely
artificial artifice to get the introductions out of the way: the viewer
basically looks over the shoulder of two guests as the popular host walks
through the party and gives a quick introductory explanation of (or has a quick
revealing exchange with) all the faces of importance. Not everyone in the
party, in other words, but enough people that specific characters register,
allowing one to put the still-living faces in conjunction with the dead bodies seen
at the start of the movie. Soon thereafter All
My Friends Are Dead segues into farcicality and grotesque, so realistic conduct often is
lacking (see: sex with a loaded gun in your hand). But then, who needs realism
or logic when, after the first *GASP!*, the crude and nasty laughs flow so
easily?
True, the humor is often sexist, crass, or simply puerile,
but as blatant and obvious and easy as many of the laughs are, a few are also subtle
(look at the girl's face when her boyfriend says he respects her too much to
ever piss on her), have long build-ups (what happens after she breaks up with
him for being such a wimp), or are unexpected (exploding silicon anyone?). Indeed,
although the film comes across as not particularly intelligent and
definitely tasteless, there is often a lot more behind the events and
interactions than what plays out. Some jokes, for all their bluntness,
display an enjoyably socially critical basis — it just isn't obvious as
they occur.And
amidst it all, Gloria (Monika Krzywkowska ), a total party-girl MILF, even
manages to give a long and extremely touching rant about the fears, if not
probably realities, older women face when entering a serious relationship with
a younger man.
Director Jan Belcl almost loses control of his material during the big
finale scene (specifically, the point in which the gun turns into one of those
magic guns that ever needs reloading), but he catches the curve with a killer
Christmas tree, a scene that reveals why every house should have a security
circuit breaker, and a closing alternative-reality ending that reveals that
sometimes shit happens even in perfect places. (Can a film be homophobic and
homo-happy at the same time?)
All My Friends Are Dead is definitely not
everyone's cup of tea, but if you are the type that enjoys a blackly funny body
count, this tightly shot grotesque will probably offer you a pleasant evening's
viewing.
And always remember: don't forget to drink enough
liquids when you're dancing the night away on X.
Over here in Germany, this zomcom was give the title Rage of the Undead, a title that is
easily open to misinterpretation in that it sounds soooo serious when this
mercifully short film (as in: it really doesn't overstay its welcome at only 77
minutes, even if it does fall apart towards the end) is anything but serious. It
is a typically batshit, blood-drenched Japanese black comedy grotesque along
the lines of, say, Vampire Girl vs. Frankenstein Girl(2009) or Tokyo Gore Police (2008),
but perhaps with a tad less gore and somewhat lower production values. Be
warned, though: "a tad less gore" hardly means that this film is
blood-lite – "blood-lite" seems never to be an option when it comes
to Nipponese comedies of this ilk.
Japanese
trailer to
Zomvideo:
Interestingly enough, and an indication of interesting cleft in the
cultures between East and West, this flick full of exposed brains, scissors in
eyes, throats ripped out, blood showers, melting faces, gay stereotypes and so
forth is/was nevertheless seen as a viable vehicle for barely legal adolescent-looking
pop-group nubiles: the cast of Zomvideo
includes numerous members of the then still-active female pop group °C-ute (see
the abysmal video below), including the group's lead singer, the at the time
19-year-old Maimi Yajima, who plays the film's main heroine. One has a hard
time imagining any American pubescent female mass-market product — don't know
any current examples, but think early Hanna Montana, Brittany or Selena Gomez (or Justin Bieber, for
that matter, with or without tats) — being allowed, much less put, in a gore-heavy
ludicrousy like this or even something similar but less extreme like, dunno, Zombiland (2009)
or Shawn of the Dead (2004 / trailer). Don't think
that would be seen as a good career move, for some odd reason…
°C-ute — Ookina Ai de Motenashite:
Zomvideo starts
off either somewhat meta or somewhat sloppy. The first person introduced is a
school-uniformed, henti-aged lass
running out of her house on the way to school, but she doesn't get very far
before running into a zombified busker with an Everybody Love Mary (1998 / trailer)
cowlick. Any notions that the lass might be the main character quickly go the
way of all the blood that spatters on the piece of breakfast toast she drops on
the ground, and soon she too is a cowlicked zombie. (Highly doubtful that this visual
zombie attribute will ever achieve canonization — but who knows. Do you know?
We don't know. Does Q know? He would, wouldn't he?)
And then comes something that either got lost in translation or was due
to cost-cutting measures or sloppy scriptwriting (or maybe we were so stoned we
mixed things up): the zombification scene is part of a video, an ancient
and shelved government-sponsored How to Survive
a Zombie Attack educational video — think of the "culturally, historically,
or aesthetically significant" shortDuck and Cover but in blood-drenched full color and
with Asian zombies instead of turtles, little white kids and atom bombs — made
some decades earlier that the film's true heroine, the Asian-fetish-inducing
Aiko (19-year-old Maimi Yajima of Fuyu
no kaidan: Boku to watashi to obaachan no monogatari [2009 / full film],
Black Fox: Age of the Ninja [2019 / trailer]
and Ôsama gêmu [2011 / trailer]),
discovers while going through an unsorted archive pile of unmarked videos at
the video production company she works at (thanks to her uncle). But damn!
Those very same zombies are now banging at the door.
Okay, we admit that by now, a few days after having watched Zomvideo, we've sort of forgot some of
the motivations behind specific characters — the zombies — but then this
blood-spattered film is pretty ridiculous and little if anything was written or
intended to be deep and serious (though there is perhaps an interpretational
level to the flick on a kind of X-man level). In any event, the movie really
doesn't remain in your head too long: it is fun while it lasts, but is hardly
something to write home to your mamaabout. (Although you could, for unlike some other Japanese zombie
comedies out there, for example Zombie
Ass: Toilet of the Dead [2011 / trailer]
or Rape Zombie: Lust of the Dead
[2011 / trailer],
Zomvideo doesn't leave you feeling
dirty and ashamed for having watched it.)
"Wait!" you say, "The zombies have a motivation? They
want more than to eat your guts or, as the case may be, brains?" Yes, indeedy! Here,
the zombies are led by the campy and at times annoying but always interesting Yasude
(Miyuki Torii, above not from the film, of the sequel to Meatball Machine
(2005), Kodoku: Meatball Machine
[2017 / trailer],
Zombie TV [2013 / trailer]
and Plan 6 Channel 9 [2016 / trailer]).
Dressed in an outfit that is a direct reference the famous Japanese cult
character Matsu the Scorpion (who was in turn played by the Japanese cult
actress Meiko Kaji), example poster below, Yasude's hat hides the fact that her
brains are hanging out. For whatever reason, she can control the zombies even
as she can control her own hunger for humans, and she and her sidekick (played
by another cookie-cut of °C-ute jailbait)
want something in the building where the horror-film-hating Aiko, her nerdy
zombie-film-loving coworker Hashimoto (Tomu Miyazaki) and her Uncle are the
last humans left alive. Luckily, the three have the Zomvideo to show them how
to fight and kill zombies with everyday items…
Zomvideo
will hardly appeal to serious zombie purists, even those who like humor between
the gut munching, for it leans way more towards the absurdly silly than the
scary or unnerving (as in: way more like the fabulously inane series Z-Nation [2014-18 / trailer]
than the mostly snore-inducing and traditional Black Summer [2019 / trailer]).
Despite the schoolgirls and nubiles, Zomvideo
refrains from sliding backwards to become just another Japanese underage-schoolgirl-fixated
slice of sexualized exploitation and, once the zombies attack, evolves into a
mildly surreal and offbeat grotesque that even includes moments of female
empowerment. The silly bizarreness of the humor goes a little over the top
towards the end with the big reveal of the video and doesn't really work, which
makes for a mildly sloppy and disappointing ending.
Nevertheless, on the whole Zomvideo
remains an amusing way to pass a short period of time (as said, 77 minutes).
Fun but inconsequential, the viewing experience is definitely improved with the
presence of beer and weed, as well as a larger and verbal viewing crowd in
front of the tube. Make this one a social experience.
Way back in March 2013, when the studly and hirsute Golden Age
porn star Harry Reems (27 Aug 1947 – 19 Mar 2013) died, we
began our long, fat look at his tool career and films: a full 8 lengthy
blog entries! (Links to each are found bellow.) And while length is almost as
much fun as girth, by the time we got to Part
VII (1986-2013) we
were really ready to roll over and go to sleep. Which is why we never got
around to finishing the already-started Addendum Parts I – 4, which looked at the films that we somehow missed
or skipped in our extended and meaty Parts
I through VII. And then we went
and lost the stick we had our Harry Reems file on (a lesson in backing
documents up, that was).
But last January, while trying to distract ourselves from the
Covid-related death of our paternal parent, we cleaned house in corners we had never cleaned before — and low and behold! The stick was found, probably where
the cat kicked it.
And so, seven years later to the month, Addendum Part I appeared, much like delayed ejaculation: better late than never. And now, following
last month's relatively short but meaty Addendum Part II, here is a somewhat longer and fatter Addendum Part III. (If you're into size, next month's final Addendum installment, Part IV, is gonna floor you.)
Not that we actually plan to finish the Addendum(s): we merely want
to finally put online what we had already finished way back then, mildly
updated. (Way back when, we lost interest in the undertaking as of the films
around 1985...)
We dedicate the rediscovered Addendum(s) to our departed
paternal parent, who inadvertently introduced us to Harry Reems when we, as a
late teen, stumbled upon his VHS copy of Deep
Throat (1972, see Harry Reems Part II) hidden in the VHS box for Key Largo (1948 / trailer).*
*He also had The
Resurrection of Eve (1973 / Purple Skies and Butterflies) hidden in his To Have and Have Not (1944 / trailer)
box, but the 1973 film wasn't funny enough to keep us watching until the end.
Perhaps a.k.a. Tiderna
förändras baby! Poster thanks to the website written over the image. A
mystery film, in all likelihood lost. But it existed once upon a time, and was
even screened as part of a double feature with the Tina Russell hicksploitation
vehicle, All in the Sex Family (1973),
at the Boyes Theatre in Boyes Hot Springs, CA. (The advert was found at the Rialto Report: Jack Bravman: Snuff, The Slaughter, and
who was J. Angel Martine?)
As far as we can tell, the iafdis the only source online thatclaims that Prurient Interest features the prurient talents of Harry Reems,
a claim that is supported by Jason S. Martinko in his book The XXX Filmography, 1968-1988, which
also adds Andrea True, Darby Lloyd Rains, Jamie Gillis, Marc Williams and Davey
Jones to the list of players and says: "This film is the story of Snow
White, going to New York City to become a porno actress. It played in Chicago,
Illinois on September 28, 1973, and San Diego, California on January 18,
1974."
Supposedly the film's trailer can be found on Vol. 14 of Bucky's '70s Triple XXX Movie House
Trailers Vol. 14 (1999), but neither film nor the trailer can currently be
found online.
The imdb, BTW, removes Reems from the cast but
adds the attractive Arlana Blue (born 15 Nov 1948 as Arlene Schnetkowski) and the tragic Valerie Marron (22 Oct 1955 –
13 Oct 2008). For more on Valerie, read Wet
Rainbow (1974): Two Lives
in Contrastat the Rialto
Report.
The director is not known to have made another movie, at least not
under that name. We are sure that Prurient Interest, in any event, is
nothing but True Art....
The Russians Are Coming
(1973, dir. Harry Reems)
Supposedly a.k.a. The Russians Are Here, this NSFW and
hairy film can be found all over the web by now. Assumedly, the title of this
one-day wonder a reference to the mainstream but mostly forgotten Norman Jewison comedy, The Russians Are Coming! The Russians Are Coming! (1966 / trailer
below), which oddly enough was nominated for four Oscars.
Once again we turn to Jason S. Martinko and his book The XXX Filmography, 1968-1988:
"Supposedly, Harry Reems directed this film about an American (Jeffrey
Hurst) who brings three New York City girls to service three Soviet bigwigs who
can't speak English. Georgina Spelvin performs a double penetration scene."
The "supposedly" can be dumped by now, according to what
Jeffrey Hurst says about the film over at the Rialto Report in Fade
To Blue: The Accidental Porn Star by Jeffrey Hurst. Hurst's first feature-length film seems to be Bob Mason's
softcore The Love Lords (1972 / scene),
which eventually got released with hardcore inserts as Saturday Night Special (1976), while Hurst's trusty erection debuted in
Contact! (1973). That film led to
Harry Reems calling him a week later to partake in the then still-unnamed
one-day wonder shot in a 14th floor apartment "at the stylish,
white ash building at 79th and Broadway", where Harry explained
the film's plot thusly: "We have three guys and three girls. Jeff, I want
you to be an Ambassador to the U.N. The other guys [John Clemens, Levi Richards (31 Jul 1944 – 6 Oct 2015)* & Ashley Moore] are horny Russian
diplomats. You bring in these call-girls to service the Russians. Not only do
you keep them happy, but you make the world a safer place."
As Hurst puts it, "As the Ambassador, I had sex with Georgina
[Spelvin] and the girl whose name I can't remember [Any Mathieu, below]. The
challenge to me was improvising dialogue and staying in character. So,
when I had my two sex scenes, I came as an Ambassador to the U.N. One was an
oral cumshot, the other was in the line of duty. It was... most diplomatic."
The now defunct blog Vintage
Gay Media was a fan of Jeffrey Hurst (photo below) and had the following to say about The Russians Are Coming!: "There
are many straight male porn stars who enjoy big gay fan bases (Harry Reems
immediately comes to mind), so why don't more people know about Jeff's work? [...]
The film was a showcase for Jeff in that he was able to display his comic
talents alongside being a very handsome stud."
In any event, before leaving porn, Hurst took part in two X-rated porno
horrors by two masters of incredibly strange films: Roberta Findlay's "feminist psycho
slasher" A Woman's Torment (1977 / credits) and
Doris Wishman's Come with Me My Love
(1976).
Over at imdb, lor from New York City saw The Russians Are Coming and
(unlike Vintage Gay Media) wasn't
impressed: "Poor Harry Reems is accused in imdb of directing this particularly poor porn film; if so it
explains why he was never in demand behind the cameras. The Russians Are Coming takes mediocrity to a new, lower level.
[...] The Russians can't speak any English. That dispenses with the need for
dialog or even a story, so we are presented with a poorly photographed all-sex
outing lasting an hour. To call this junk tedious is too kind. [...] Spelvin is
given no dialog to work with, instead she embarrassingly dances around as if
doing ballet or imitating Isadora Duncan, in the nude of course, and it's sad
to behold. The makeup department was kind to Andrea True, who looks positively
lovely, but is merely here for mechanical sex. [...] After the final series of
money shots, film simply ends with the Russians leaving. In a more logical
world, this ephemeral movie would have been lost forever and not missed, but thanks to Something
Weird it has been reissued [...]. After the obligatory big final orgy, everybody does the conga! Ole!"
Reems stunt-cocked for one of the guys who couldn't deliver the
prerequisite second load, for which Hurst had no problem.
Has nothing to do with either Reems's
or Jewison's film —
Val Bennett's The
Russians Are Coming (1968):
Revolving Teens
(1973, dir. Harry Reems)
A.k.a. Revolting Teens. According to Jason S. Martinko's book The XXX Filmography, 1968-1988, "An uncredited Harry Reems
directed this silly schoolgirl story. [...] It's also known in the USA by the
bowdlerized titles Revolving Tease
and Revolving Youth." The Shakespearean plot: "The sexual escapades of the students and teachers at
a high school. [The
TMDB]"
Probably once hard to find, the hour-long one-day wonder can now
be found for free all over the web or bought from sites like Hot
Movies, which describes
the film thusly: "This is one dysfunctional
Academy. Filled with coed students who don't know the first thing about wood
shop, but they definitely know how to get their wood treated with care, girls
who don't care about badminton, but love to play with cocks, and a
principal/headmistress with an alluring French accent who seems to solve all
problems using her mouth, hands, and holes!"
Back on 29 November 2012,
however,Woody Anders gave a bit more detail at the imdb: "[...] Legendary adult cinema stud
Harry Reems sports a hilariously obvious powdered wig and hams it up with
hearty gusto as a hot-tempered, pipe-smoking carpentry shop teacher. Fetching
brunette Any Mathieu likewise has a field day as lusty principal Miss Dupont:
Mathieu not only has a pretty face and a nice slim body, but also wears an
adorable bow-tie during her strenuous sex scene with Reems and later engages in
a scorching hot girl-girl session with one of the errant female students. Eric Edwards is his usual affable, easygoing self
as handsome gym teacher Mr. Hardy, who most certainly lives up to his name in
his energetic coupling with the yummy Helen Madigan. Meanwhile the luscious
Valerie Marron gamely participates in a sizzling threesome with two ready,
willing, and able guys. [...] This breezy affair vividly captures the carefree
'if it feels good, do it' happy, libertine, and uninhibited vibe of the 70s; it's
a startling hoot to see adults blithely go all the way with adolescents with no
concern whatsoever about the possible dire consequences of their actions.
Enjoyable merry smut."
To an extent, the website Rock
Sock Pop seems to share
Mr. Anders's opinion about the instant non-masterpiece, and says, "Revolting Teens is amusing enough. It's
light on plot but heavy on sex and goofy highjinks with Reems doing his usual
schtick and the ladies giving their all. Mathieu steals the show as the
principal and looks great too. Helen Madigan's presence is always welcome and
Eric Edwards proves to be almost as good as Reems when it comes to goofy comedy.
Ultimately if this is no lost classic it's a fun, light watch equal parts
amusing and sexy."
The other two moustaches on screen belong to Jeffrey Hurst and
hunka-hunka man John Buco... As is the case with Jeffrey Hurst (see: The Russians Are Coming!), the Rialto Report, the inexhaustible
historians of the Golden Age, recently found and spoke with the long-lost John
Buco in their piece John Buco: The Double Life of Water Power's Mystery Man. In regard to Harry Reems, in that
interview Buco had the following to say: "Harry Reems was easy to talk
with, he was open. He was an A-type personality. All that energy was constantly
there, so you got it all. But he was a funny guy. He was very comfortable in
his skin. I recall easy, fun times, even working with him. [...]"
In our search for info about
Revolving Teens, we were able to confirm at least three locations where it
was officially screened on a silver screen. For one, it was screened as a "co-hit" with Honeypie (1976)
and The Story of Joanna (1976) — the latter possibly the porn film debut
of Zebedy Colt (20 Dec 1929 – 29 May 2004) — at the obscure Hut Adult Theatre
2410 San Mateo Pl., New Mexico; on 10 Oct 1974, it was part of a double feature
with Shaun Costello'sTycoon's
Daughter (1973) at the forgotten Buena Vista Cinema in California, and in '76 at the Aardvark-Termite Twin in Chicago, where the Aardvark screened the possibly now-lost Switchcraft (1973) and Ed Wood's Necromania (1971), and the Termite
screened Revolving Teens with the unknown
Teen Age Runaways (Carter Stevens' Punk Rock [1977], which later got
re-released as Teenage Runaways,
hadn't been made yet). But for Teen Age
Runaways and Switchboard, all
the mentioned pre-Brazilian porn films can easily be found online.
Bedroom Bedlam
(1973, dir. Joey Lambert)
For a long time the director of this one-day wonder was generally
considered "unknown", but somewhere along the line it got credited to a "Joey Lambert". At the Rialto Report, for example, Jeffrey Hurst
in Fade
To Blue: The Accidental Porn Star by Jeffrey Hurst also claims that the man who told the cast what to do was Joey Lambert, adding that he was
"an X-rated filmmaker who would eventually work himself into mainstream
films" — what mainstream film they are, we know not: "Joey Lambert" seems to have
worked under a pseudonym. Hurst, in any event, describes Bedroom Bedlam as "a crude Marx Brother-esque, bedroom farce
starring Tina Russell and Georgina Spelvin."
According to Jason S. Martinko's book The XXX Filmography, 1968-1988, Reems appears in the movie, but the
fact is that Martinko simply mistook mustaches — and there are many in the
film, not just Hurst's. Upper-lip hair was also found on co-star "Guy
Thomas", for example. "Guy Thomas", seen sneering directly above
is actually some guy named Mark Suben, a former district attorney of New York's
Cortland County, who now is in his 70s and both regrets and apologizes for his
porno past.
But to look at the misattributed film anyways, Vintage Archive offers the following blow-by-blow
account of the movie: "Sylvie (Tina Russell) sees her husband Doug (Jason
Russell) off to work. As soon as Doug leaves, she calls her lover, Bernie
(Jeffery Hurst), and invites him over. Stanley (Guy Thomas), the apartment
superintendent, shows up to fix a leak. Sylvie starts to do him, and Bernie
arrives. Stanley hides in the bathroom. Sylvie and Bernie get it on, and
Pauline the maid (Any Mathieu) comes in to clean. Bernie hides in the closet,
and Sylvie leaves to go shopping. As Pauline is cleaning, she finds Bernie in
the closet. Bernie fucks Pauline. Then, Doug, the husband, comes home from the
office with his lover (Georgina Spelvin). Bernie and Pauline hide in the
closet. Doug and his lover fuck. Then, Doug and Sylvie's daughter, Susie (Valerie
Marron) comes home from school. Doug's lover hides in the bathroom, and Doug
goes back to work. Doug's lover and Stanley get it on in the bathroom. Pauline
the maid comes out of the closet, and she and Susie get it on. George (LeviRichards), Susie's boyfriend, comes over. Susie and Pauline fuck George. Doug's
girlfriend sneaks out of the bathroom and hides in the closet with Bernie.
Sylvie comes home, and Susie and Pauline hide in the bathroom with Stanley,
while George hides in the closet with Doug's girlfriend and Bernie. Bernie and
George do Doug's girl, and Susie and Pauline do Stanley. Doug comes home, and
he and Sylvie finally go at it. As Sylvie is doing Doug, everyone sneaks out —
except Stanley. When Doug gets up to take a shower, he finds Stanley hiding in
the tub. Stanley says to Doug 'I fixed the leak!', and runs out, leaving Doug
to confront his wife, who just shrugs. Confused? Watch it. It's hilarious."
Going by the crappy jpg above, Bedroom Bedlam (lower left on the page above) made it to La La Land, where it was
screened at the Cave Theatre and Yale Theatre in 1973. The film it was screened with, Overexposed, was probably not the 1956 film noir starring Bad Gal Cleo Moore (31 Oct 1929 – 25 Oct 1973), Over-Exposed.
A lost film, unless Sean Cunningham (Friday the Thirteenth [1980 / trailer]) has
it in his garage.
Over at imdb, the director and scriptwriter Shaun
Costello explains the movie:
"In 1972 porno was all the rage, and we thought that a documentary, or
docudrama about the making of XXX rated films might just be successful at the
box office. The actors who participated in the shooting of the loops were:
Myself, Harry Reems, Fred Lincoln, Lucy Grantham, Sargeant Tina, and several gypsies.
The footage turned out to be hilarious, but it needed another element in order
to hold an audience's interest for feature length. I wrote a story about a filmmaker,
who was making porno on the side, unbeknownst to Mrs. Filmmaker. [...] We
intercut the new dramatized scenes of the filmmaker and his wife with the
original documentary footage of the making of porno loops, and the result was a
feature-length docudrama, or docucomedy called Loops. In the fall of 1972 Bill Markle and I began the process of
screening our project for potential distributors. [...] During one of the
screenings, Sean Cunningham began weeping. He saw Loops as the story of his life, right down to having the same first
name as the main character. (Me.) So Bill and I sold the picture to Cunningham.
[...] Cunningham opened Loops to
mixed reviews and pretty negative box office. This movie seems to have
completely disappeared from the face of the earth."
This negative film review above, from the 03 Aug 1973 issue of New
York's Daily News, is an example of a
review, we would say, from someone who probably should have stuck to
reviewing Disney flicks. The good sir, current crime novelist Jerry Oster,
caught the film at the First Avenue Screening Room (@61st St. in NYC) during
its limited run of 2–8 August 1973. "The First Avenue Screening Room was
small cinema that opened on 1st Ave [at 61st St.] on May
17, 1973 with Memories of
Underdevelopment (1968 / trailer). It
was [...] known for presenting neglected, hard-to-market, and shelved films of
merit. [...] On March 19, 1975, it was renamed Byron Theatre and operated as a
gay adult movie theatre, opening with The
Devil and Mr. Jones (1974). The Byron Cinema became the Eastworld Cinema in
1980 to 1981. In 1982 until 1990 it operated as Art East Cinema. In 1991 it was
briefly renamed York Cinema and played regular recent movies, and then went
back to the Art East Cinema name until it closed in 1994. [Cinema Treasures]"
Plot to The Devil and Mr.
Jones: "Young Buck commits suicide and is tested to decide if he
should go to Heaven or Hell. [Gay
Erotic Video Index]"
Somewhere along the way, someone gets fisted with a studded glove.
Returning to Loops:
of the cast, two names — Lucy Grantham & Fred J. Lincoln — had starred the
year previously in
Cunningham & Wes Craven's horror classic, TheLast House on the Left (1972).Interestingly enough, Lincoln considered Last House the worst one he ever made, while Grantham remains proud of the movie.
Intensive Care
(1974, dir. David Sear)
One of only two known movies officially credited to David Sear as
director (at least at the imdb & iafd), the other being the decidedly odd
one-day wonder Ape Over Love (1974).
For more on that film, see Part III, where we also present evidence that
Sears may have also directed the Pleasure
Cruise (maybe '71 or '73 or '74), starring Reems & Andrea True (26 July 1943 – 7 Nov 2011).
Long version of Andrea True's second
hit single,
N.Y., You Got Me Dancing
(1977):
According to Jason S. Martinko's book The XXX Filmography, 1968-1988, "This corny, burlesque-style
medical sex comedy with lots of Jewish humor stars Harry Reems as Dr. Scrotum.
Nurse Nookie takes care of needy patients like Bobby Astyr, who got his
'schmeckel' caught in a meat grinder at the delicatessen." Dr. Scrotum
even tries to raise the dead at one point.
Cast, aside from Harry Reems: Don Allen, Georgina Spelvin, Darby
Lloyd Rains, Mary Stuart (23 Nov 1949 – 12 Apr 2013), Cindy
West, Marc Stevens (2 Sept 1943 – 28 Jan 1989) and Bobby Astyr (14 Nov 1937 – 7
Apr 2002).
If nowhere else, Intensive
Care was obviously screened as part of a double feature with a "second
adult hit", Spaced Out, at the
Exotic Cinema in Dayton, Ohio, which was less a theatre than a bookstore with a
screening room. (Annual membership only $1!)
Needless to say, that "second
hit" was not the British sci-fi sex comedy Outer Touch (1979 / trailer), poster above, which got renamed Spaced Out
somewhere along the way, but the 1971 one-day wonder Spaced Out (full NSFW film) from Director Unknown starring
Suzanne Fields and Nora Wieternik, both of whom seemed to have left the biz
after appearing (as Dale Ardor and Queen Amora, respectively) in the grindhouse
classic, Flesh Gordon (1974 / trailer).
The plot of Director Unknown's Spaced
Out: "Suzanne Fields stars as a junkie, Cleo, who ditches her good-guy
loser boyfriend (Gerard Broulard) for her pusher with perfect hair (Steven
Jaworski). [Video
Zeta One]"
Emil Dean Zoghby's music to the British
Outer Touch a.k.a. Spaced Out:
Girl in a Penthouse
(1974, dir. Mike Felix)
Maybe also known as Girls
in the Penthouse, but is not to be confused with Erwin C. Dietrich's Penthouse Playgirls (1972), poster
above, a.k.a. White Slavers, Congressional Playgirls and, in the
original German, Die Mädchenhändler, poster below — something we point out so as to have a few images to present. (BTW: Temple
of Schlock hates Dietrich's
movie.)
When it comes to finding anything about this seventies slice of
obscure porn, things start with the problem that the different base sources
don't even agree on the film's name: In The
XXX Filmography, 1968-1988, author Jason S. Martinko, like the folks at the
imdb, speak of [multiple] Girls in the Penthouse; the iafd, however, speaks of the singular Girl in the Penthouse, as do other
sources (including advertisements found in old copies of Psychotronic Video). But whether one or more girls, we would say
it's safe to say that the film is/was a one-or-two-day wonder. It might possibly also be
a lost film, but the trailer is out there somewhere: in 2002 it was included in
Something Weird's X-rated trailer compendium Bucky's '70s Triple XXX Movie House
Trailers Vol. 18 (2002).
"Mike Felix" never made
another movie, as far as we can tell; the name is assumedly a pseudonym. A long
and hard search of the web on 08 Feb 2021 resulted in the discovery of a single
sentence that led to a non-existent website: "As a full-fledged
director he guided Harry Reems through Girl
in a Penthouse, a hard core epic, and Jennifer
Welles and Roz Kelly in an R-rated film, The
Female Response (1973, above with Harry Reems). Then he wanted to do a gay film but it was hard to
get anybody to take a chance on him." (As of 4 May 2021, even that quote can no longer be found.) Assuming there is any validity to
that sentence, then the director would be Tim Kincaid (born Tim Gambiani).
The possibility that "Mike Felix" is Kincaid and
that this film is his is minute but possible. Kincaid was in NYC around that
time, as we mentioned when writing of Kincaid & The Female Response in Part
III: "In
regard to [The Female Response],
over at Fangoria Kincaid explained the inspiration to
the film as follows: 'I was sitting in a hotel lobby waiting for my ride to
Boston, where I was booked for a couple of weeks of extra/stunt-driving work in
The Boston Strangler (1968 / trailer),
when I read a New York Times article about the burgeoning soft-porn
industry. I instantly decided that was how I'd get my foot in the door as a
director.'"
True, Girl in a Penthouse probably isn't "soft-porn", but Kincaid has never been
adverse to hardcore, as he eventually had no problem finding the funding for hardcore gay
films: as the legendary gay-porn director Joe Gage, "the porn poet of the queer working
class",
he helmed a loose trilogy of hardcore queer classics in a row: Kansas City Trucking Co. (1976, with Jack Wrangler [11 July 1946 –
7 Apr 2009] and Richard Locke*), El Paso Wrecking Corp. (1978, with Fred
Halsted [17 Jul 1941 – 9 May 1989] & Locke), and L.A. Tool & Die (1979, with Casey Donovan [2 Nov 1943 – 10
Aug 1987]). During the 80s, he was also a productive director of extremely low
grade, R-rated grindhouse exploiters, his most (in)famous probably being Breeders (1986) or Robot Holocaust (1987 / trailer).
*The GIF
found to the right between Trailers of Promise and Babes of Yesteryear is of studmuffin
Locke (11 June 1941 – 25 Sept 1996) and non-studmuffin Steve Boyd (12 May 1951 – 2 Mar 2004),
in Kansas City Trucking Co.
Trailer to Tim Kincaid's
Breeders:
All that fine and dandy, but aside
from that one sentence online, we could find no supporting proof that Tim
Kincaid is/was "Mike Felix". Anyone out there know?
There is, at least, a general
agreement on the cast of the movie: though we know not their roles, Daniel
"Grey Pubes" Harin — see His Loving Daughter furtherabove — is there, as is Harry Reems and Arlana Blue. The only plot
description we could find anywhere (which describes a love triangle of sorts)
is as follows: "A sexy, young New Yorker has everything she needs — a
sugar daddy to take care of her and young lover to REALLY take care of
her."
Hmmm, maybe we do know their respective roles...
Hotel Hooker
(1974, dir. Shaun Costello as
"Warren Evans")
A.k.a. Hotel Hookers. According to Jason S. Martinko's book The XXX Filmography, 1968-1988,
"Harry Reems' name appears in the credits, but he's not in the
movie." Indeed, the one-day wonder actually features Davey Jones, Eric
Edwards, Marc Stevens (2 Sept 1943 – 28 Jan 1989), Margery "Mary" Stewart, Russ
Carlson, Tammy Tilden and Toni Scott. Toni Scott is seen (barely) in some orgy
scenes in one of our fave films, Hardgore (1975), while Mary "Margery" Stewart also
appeared in Costello's The Sensuous Fly
Girls (1976), a fact we mention only as an excuse to present the fun poster below.
A cheap 2014 DVD release says the following on the DVD's back
cover: "What better way to get yourself a piece of ass then [sic] to go
the [sic] hotel where the bed is only moments away. A price is arranged and off
you go to the races fucking a gal who makes fucking her business. Enjoy!"
Over at Sweet
Soundtrack, they add
"A man gets more than he paid for at his local brothel" and claim
that among the songs used (one assumes without permission) on the soundtrack is...
Carol King
thinking about Harry Reems?
One Night at a Time
(1984, dir. "Ned Morehead")
(We ask: What man doesn't ne[e]d more head?) We took a look at Girls of the Night, the other 1984 porn
project directed by "Ned Morehead", in Part
V. As it says at hot
movies, "This is
one seriously classic 80's flick. With big hair, hairy bushes and lots of lip
gloss. You don't want to miss this feature where neighbors teach each other to
be bad." Made during the last year of "the Golden Age of Porn" (1969–1984), and it shows. "Morehead", BTW (and
according to the iafd), is a pseudonym for the equally
pseudonymous "Darrel Lovestrange".
A take-off of the then-popular TV series One Day at a Time(1975–1984), the notable
names of the cast (as far as we are concerned) includes Colleen Brennan, Robert
Kerman (of Cannibal Holocaust [1980]), and the
omnipresent Jamie Gillis. Harry has a scene with Mai Lin, one of the first porn stars of
Chinese descent.
The plot, as given by Anonymousat imdb: "When she turns into a single mother, Maggie (Colleen
Brennan a.k.a. Sharron Kelly) is relieved by her Asian neighbor Mandy (Mai Lin)
via an intimate massage. Masseur Ramone (Robert Kerman) is eventually brought
in to assist them. When Maggie goes out, her couch hosts her daughters Amy
(Karen Summer) and Dorothy (Desiree Lane) and their respective dates, Dan
(Shone Tayler) and Marshall (Steve Powers). When a Telegram Man (Randy West)
wants his tip, he lets Amy and Dorothy gag and bind him for an alternative
payment. Mandy takes handyman Louis (Harry Reems) to her apartment to seduce
him. He tries to run away, until her dildo collection reminds him of his
utility belt. Finally, Maggie is in bed with Mitchell (Jamie Gillis)."
Sounds like a porn movie.
"Masseur Ramone", or Robert Kerman (16 Dec 1947 – 27 Dec 2018), also known as R. Bolla, had a notable career in
non-porn grindhouse products, perhaps most notably as the lead in the unpleasant
classic Cannibal Holocaust (1980).
We already took a look at this flick in 2014, in Harry
Reems Part VII, where
we have it listed as from 1988, oddly enough, so its accepted release date seems to have changed since 2014. We really don't have much to add
here... other than that since then, someone was nice enough to upload a version
of the film's theme song onto YouTube.
Let us share it with you here...
Title track:
Sung by the unknown Nina Lark, it's a "a tearful ballad Anne Murray would have given her left
tit to warble back in her heyday! (Distribpix)" Nina Lark followed this song up a year later, in 1985, with the title track to the hand-helper I Thought You Would Never Ask and then seems to have disappeared, much like the composer of both songs, Daniel Bowles.
Wet, Wild and Wicked
(1984,
"dir." Thomas Paine)
When, exactly, Reems initially retired from making porn is a bit
difficult to say because so many of his films were released late, re-released
with new titles, or cut into "new projects" that it almost seems that he never
left the biz. But, if one is to believe the 28 Nov 1982 article published in
the Kansas City Star, he stopped
fucking on film after his (later overturned) conviction in 1976 and didn't
return until Society Affairs in 1982
(see Part
V) — just in time to watch the Golden Age of the pornographic film make its last gasps (with films
like Roommates [1982]) and then limp
into the sunset years of D2V video fodder. This D2V piece o' product here is fairly
typical of the fuck films to follow: less a film than simply scenes from other
movies and/or indiscriminate sex scenes stitched together with a plot one step
away from plotless.
And the plot here? As if... "A virtual romp through the
sex-soaked escapades of several summer lovers who provide relief in and out of
the cabana! They enjoy their sex hot, wild and messy." Harry has one
scene, with Becky Savage* and
Colleen Brennan, shot for the "movie"...
*Becky Savage, BTW, is found in one of the truly original and
intriguing arty & "new wave" porn projects of the twilight years
of the Golden Age, a real movie much more worth watching than X-rated fodder
like Wet, Wild and Wicked: the oddly
anti-sex, sci-fi porn movie Café Flesh
(1982).
