Harry H. Novak, Part III: 1965 – 1966

12 January 1928 — 26 March 2014

"When I was a kid, my Daddy told me, 'There's a buyer for everything.' And I lived to find out that he was right."
Harry H. Novak

Harry H. Novak, alongside David F Friedman (24 December 1923 — 14 February 2011) one of the great (s)exploitation kings of the last half of the 20th century, died 26 March 2014 at the age of 86.

A detailed career review of all the projects Harry H. Novak — as Boxoffice International, Valiant International Pictures, Harry N Novak Productions and one assumes other still undocumented firm names — foisted upon the American public would be Sisyphean task at best and hardly possible, as no full and unequivocal list exists. What follows is a review of the films that we found that, for the most part, probably had Novak involved somewhere along the way — and some that may not have. It is definitely not a complete list, and definitely not infallible, it is merely culled from sources reliable and unreliable that we found online. We also in no way suggest that the given release dates are the correct ones, they are merely the first ones we found.

If you know any we missed, feel free to send the title... 

Go here for Part I
Go here for Part II — 1956-64

The Beast That Killed Women
(1965, dir. Barry Mahon)

Great poster! Personally, we here at A Wasted Life have our doubts that Harry H. Novak had anything to do with this movie, as there is only one source, an online magazine called Funhouse, that claims he (in the form of Boxoffice International Film Distributors) had his fingers in the pie this, yet another no-budget nudie-cutie from fringe filmmaker Barry Mahon.

Gratuitous Nudity:

Bloody Disgusting explains the movie: "It's a nudist's nightmare as naked terror runs amuck in this delirious horror film [...]! Unable to get an even tan, wife (Delores Carlos) and hubby (Byron Mabe) scurry off to a Miami nudist camp at precisely the same moment the camp is invaded by The Beast that Killed Women, a goofy-looking gorilla with an appetite for the ladies. Murder and panic quickly spread before a pretty policewoman (Juliet Anderson) volunteers to enter the camp as ape bait."

The Beast That Killed Women has the distinguished honor of being one of the first films to ever feature cult fave and future suicide Janet Banzet (17 May 1934 — 29 July 1971) as well as future Golden Age porn star Juliet Anderson (23 July 1938 — 11 January 2010), the latter better known as "Aunt Peg". The Smart Marks, which had possibly never before seen a nudie-cutie, complains that: "Despite the credit's claim of 'Miami Beach's Most Lovely Nudists', there's a disturbingly high number of tan lines present [...], and the women are 'normal women', as opposed to the pin-up queens and starlets expected of these films [...]. Besides their physical appearances, however, the nudists are just plain annoying. They wander around, play a game of volleyball, and go swimming, and then once the killings occur they all whine and complain about how scared they are and how they're going to leave the camp. That's it. With probably a maximum of five minutes of beast in the film, and one killing, that means you're stuck with these annoying women for an hour [...]. Lovely."

Clip from
The Beast That Killed Women:


 

Nude Scrapbook
(1965, dir. Barry Mahon)

Personally, we here at A Wasted Life have our doubts that Harry H. Novak had anything to do with this movie, as there is only one source, an online magazine called Funhouse, that claims he (in the form of Boxoffice International Film Distributors) had his fingers in the pie this, yet another no-budget nudie-cutie from fringe filmmaker Barry Mahon.

The American Film Institute Catalog of Motion Pictures (Vol. 1, Pt. 1) calls the film a "comedy": "One of New York's most successful pin-up photographers (Bernie Allen) enjoys thumbing through his scrapbook of the world's most beautiful women whenever he has a few free minutes. As he reminisces, his vivid imagination brings his models to life again. At the same time, he maintains a busy schedule. Before he can steal some time with his scrapbook, he must photograph the beautiful pin-up models who wait in his studio."

Also from Barry Mahon —
The Love Cult (1966):



 

International Smorgasbroad
(1965, dir. Barry Mahon)

Yet another Barry Mahon nudie-cutie with Bernie Allen. Assuming that a Something Weird double feature of Harry Novak films would, in turn, present trailers to more Novak films, we look at the "Bra-Busting Sexploitation Trailers" presented in "Harry Novak presents Street of a Thousand Pleasures / Way Out Topless": Street of a Thousand Pleasures, Forbidden Beauties, International Smorgasbroad, Paris Topless, Sexy Proibitissimo, Substitution and The Wonderful World of Girls. Of them, three (Street of a Thousand Pleasures [1972], Substitution [1970] and The Wonderful World of Girls [1965]) are known to have been pies in which Novak had his fingers, the rest we see as open to question — but, for the benefit of the doubt, we'll count them as have been fondled by Harry Novak. So, let's take a look at International Smorgasbroad (1965), yet another low-class product from the ever-productive Barry Mahon.

The only info we found online about the movie is from TCM, which explains "Every time gourmet chef Bernie Allen looks at food, he is inspired by visions of beautiful, nude women. Two cantaloupes, a can of sardines, and a mold of shimmering jello are among the foods which evoke mental delights. Since Bernie is a man of conscience, he tries instead to think of his librarian girl friend, or of the upcoming Sunday school picnic, but he is powerless in the face of the beautiful visions that grip his imagination as he works."

Among the jiggling boobs are those of "the Swenson Twins" (aka Darlene and Dawn Bennett), Delores Carlos, Gigi Darlene and Herschell Gordon Lewis's then-wife, Allison Louise Downe, seen above from behind in Goldilocks and the Three Bares (1963 / credits). As "Louise Downe", she is credited as having written the scripts for the HG Lewis classics Blood Feast (1963 / trailer), The Gruesome Twosome (1967 / trailer), She-Devils on Wheels (1968 / trailer) and others.

Trailer:

International Smorgas-Broad, trailer von mrdantefontana

 

Tales of a Salesman
(1965, dir. Don Russell)

"Hello out there! I’m a poltergeist, sent down here to help salesmen! I'm the gremlin of the spirit world. And I do awful things. But man, do I have fun! For example, right now I'm here on your planet trying to help a salesman with problems."

In an article on Harry Novak by Gene Ross in AVN — Adult Video News (reprinted in Masque), it was once explained that after the success of Kiss Me Quick!, Novak struck a deal with Rossmore Films (headed by Marty Ross and Ted Paramore, the latter aka porn director Harald Lime) to distribute their productions; Tales of a Salesman was one such production. Tales of a Salesman is, as far as we can tell, the only directorial work of Don Russell who, two years previously in 1963, played "Carl Oliver", the first teacher to die in the low-budget masterpiece The Sadist, which we here at A Wasted Life justly listed as Number One on our "Ten Best Films [Viewed] in 2013" list. Like that film, the cinematography of Tales of a Salesman was done by William Zsigmond, later Vilmos Zsigmond, who won as Oscar for the cinematography of Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977 / trailer). Tales of a Salesman is written by John Lawrence, who six years later wrote his disasterpiece, The Incredible 2-Headed Transplant (1971).

Trailer to
The Incredible 2-Headed Transplant:

According to Bleeding Skull, whence we took the movie quote above, "After forty-five seconds, it's obvious that this movie is something special. [...] Sixty years ago, nudie-cuties were the epitome of red-hot sexuality. [...] Today, slogging through a nudie-cutie takes more effort than being cordial to someone who wears a hoodie without a shirt underneath. Even nudie-cuties that were directed by lunatics like H.G. Lewis (The Adventures of Lucky Pierre [1961 / trailer]) and Barry Mahon (Nude Scrapbook [1965]), are relentlessly boring and repetitive. But there are exceptions — instances when madness, creative drive, or a rejection of reality take over. That's when nudie-cuties get good. That's what happens when Russ Meyer one-ups Jean-Luc Godard with the pop-art earthquake known as Wild Gals of the Naked West (1962). That's also what happens when Bob Cresse dresses in drag and keeps a werewolf for a pet in House on Bare Mountain (1962 / full film). That's what happens when Tales of a Salesman happens."

Plot, according to some website: "Herman (David Reed) dreams of being warned by his manager to increase his sales. As he contemplates his predicament, a mischievous poltergeist arrives to help him out. The ghost surveys the salesman's territory for potential customers and discovers five scantily-dressed prospects."

Trailer to Russ Meyer's
Wild Gals of the Naked West:

Wild Gals of the naked west "trailer" Russ Meyer von gregwallace

 

Agony of Love
(1965, writ & dir. William Rotsler)

 "Don't bite! Pain hurts."

(William Rotsler as the Beatnik)

In the article about Novak written by Gene Ross in an issue of AVN — Adult Video News (reprinted in Masque), the author calls the movie "a luridly fascinating sketch about prostitutions, based on a real event. [...] It did enormously well." Its stars the pneumatic, great non-actress Pat Barrington — we here at A Wasted Life often wonder where she is now. Harry Novak makes a rare and un-credited film appearance as a door opener in this William Rotsler (3 July 1926 — 8 October 1997) movie about a bored housewife who works — shades of Luis Buñuel's Belle de jour (1967 / trailer) — as a call girl on the side. Video Drone, which thinks the film is "easily his best work", says: "Made in the time when the drive-ins ruled entertainment, during the golden age of sexploitation smut, The Agony of Love is a real standout among many of its competitors of the era, not the least of which is due to that luscious 60s' silicone siren, Pat Barrington."

Funhouse shares their opinion: "Boxoffice's first diversion from nudie-cuties, this black and white kinky is raised above its peers by the relative talents of its creator, William Rotsler. [...] Barrington is 'Barbara' by day, and 'Brandy' by night. Rotsler gives us a psychological study, told through Barrington's visits to her shrink (who has Groucho greasepaint eyebrows). She talks of feeling unwanted and unloved by the men in her life: her moralistic father and her workaholic husband. Her neurosis leads her to a night life of prostitution where the customer's pay her for her time and love — she thus feels useful and wanted. [...] This film is similar to others in that most of the actual sex act are implied or off camera. The extent of the on-camera action is almost always a topless woman in her underwear rolling around on a bed with a guy in HIS underwear, or just as commonly, in his long pants — that's it, they're done!"

In an interview at Mondo Digital, Harry Novak once revealed: "Agony of Love was the story of a couple I knew very well, the woman in particular. She was married to a very rich man, and she'd sit around all day without nothing much to do. She wanted to make money on her own. This happened on Sunset Boulevard, at a restaurant called Ben Frank's across from the Playboy Club, where I saw this blonde over on the other side of the room and told the guy I was eating with, 'See her over there? She's got money in the bank. A lot of money. She doesn't know what to do with it.' We started talking, and that's how Agony of Love got started. She would go out and hustle, not for the money, but for the fact that she could make money. If you see the end of the picture, then you know the whole story. It's really true. She's dead now, and so is her husband."

Pat Barringer dreaming:

 

The Wonderful World of Girls
(1965, dir. Peter Perry Jr. [as Arthur P. Stootsberry])

A lesser-known and lesser-screened nudie-cutie "Presented" by Harry Novak; according to the William Rotsler Virtual Museum, "Rotsler did camera stills for the movie The Astro-Naughties. This was co-filmed with or a scene in The Wonderful World of Girls." We could find little info about either movie online, other than the latter premiered in beautiful Fresno, California, on 10 September 1965.

Over at the Kinsey Institute, they offer the kind of platitudes written when space must be filled and no info exists: "In 1959, films such as Russ Meyer's The Immoral Mr. Teas (1959) brought forth the age of the nudie cutie. These silly slapstick comedies specialized in showing as many topless, large-breasted women as possible. One such film is The Wonderful World of Girls (1965), directed by Peter Perry (under the pseudonym Arthur P. Stootsberry) and produced by Harry Novak, the sexploitationeer known for such movies as Kiss Me, Quick (1964) and Mantis in Lace (1968). This film for 'Broad Minded Adults with Young Ideas' features a poster that includes many of the staples of the nudie cutie, including a large number of attractive women, the leering, voyeuristic man, and the promise of 'The Wildest Party Ever Filmed'."

TCM offers a plot description to WWG, but — not that we have any justification — it simply feels wrong to us: "Although Sammy, a maintenance man, is faithful to his suspicious wife, Fanny, he continually finds himself in compromising situations with nude women. As Sammy and Fanny watch a movie, an attractive exhibitionist sitting next to Sammy disrobes, placing her clothes on his lap. Jumping to conclusions, Fanny beats her husband. At work the next day, Sammy daydreams of beautiful girls who disrobe as he plays music on the mop, broom, and duster. Diving toward a waiting beauty, he collides with his wife, who has been napping as she keeps track of him. She again beats him. Sammy and Fanny then go to visit a doctor, but they stumble into a Nudist Colony Club office instead. A group of pretty applicants disrobe and attempt to initiate Sammy into the club. Sammy receives another beating from his wife. He finally takes a job as a salesman and visits a house inhabited by four scantily-dressed girls. As they try to lead him to the bedroom, the police burst in and drag all of them before a judge, who places all the blame on Sammy."

Among the nude gals of the movie is Missy Simone, seen above, but not from the movie. And below, a film that probably has nothing to do with Harry Novak*: Revenge of the Virgins (1959), Peter Perry Jr.'s directorial debut and possibly the first Western nudie cutie ever made — two years before Russ Meyer's Wild Gals of the Naked West (1962).

Full Move —
Revenge of the Virgins:
 

*We found one source that calls the film a Novak film.

Crazy Wild and Crazy
(1965, dir. Barry Mahon)

Novak distributes another Barry Mahon movie. The plot, according to TCM: "Bob Meyer (Tony Bogart) buys himself some movie equipment, hires 20 models, and enthusiastically sets out to make nude movies. When his first film is completed, he is startled at the results. He has produced a wild comedy: a volleyball game is ridiculously speeded up, while swimming and diving scenes have been caught in slow motion. Four images of the same woman suddenly appear together, and then seem to turn upside-down." Crazy Wild and Crazy is one of those films that have aged so badly that they make excellent moving wall deco for parties.

Crazy Wild and Crazy premièred in Los Angeles on 4 March 1966 and was, at one point, banned in Maryland. Among the on-screen pulchritude: both of the non-identical Bennett Twins (Darlene & Dawn), two long-forgotten lasses active in exploitation in the mid-sixties, often in the same film, like this one here or Doris Wishman's Another Day Another Man (1966 / trailer). We here at A Wasted Life wonder where they are now...

While It Lasts — the Full Film @ YouTube:

Hawaiian Thigh
(1965, dir. Bob Felderman)

In an article on Novak by Gene Ross in an issue of AVN — Adult Video News (reprinted in Masque), Ross states that after the success of Kiss Me Quick!, Novak struck a deal with Rossmore Films (headed by Marty Ross and Ted Paramore, the latter aka porn director Harald Lime) to distribute their productions; Hawaiian Thigh was one such production. Director Bob Felderman can be seen acting in the other Novak/Rossmore film, The Ruined Bruin (1961, writ & dir John K. McCarthy).

The American Film Institute Catalog of Motion Pictures (Vol. 1, Pt. 1) offers the following plot: "Prominent Hollywood producer Pompus J. Pumpslush invites a novice reporter to his office to promote his latest production Hawaiian Thigh. Unaware that Pumpslush produces 'nudies', the rookie is not prepared for the reception he receives from the nude secretary, who has been instructed to impress the young man. The producer begins the interview with a preview of the film: a group of beautiful vacationers begin a holiday in the glamour capitals of the world. After a wild send-off in Hollywood, they head for Las Vegas, where they soon run out of funds and become involved in a strip poker game. Next, they charter a yacht to Hawaii, and sunbathe on the deck while the love-starved crew looks on. Once on land, they attend a native luau and perform a hula without grass skirts. Afterwards, they happily head home. The reporter is ecstatic. To ensure a favorable review, Pumpslush enlists the aid of the steno, who performs a wild striptease for the already-shaken reporter."

Among the gals of the movie is Maureen Gaffney of such fine stuff as Ted V. Mikels' The Black Klansman (1966) and One Shocking Moment (1965 / scene), the latter of which is source of the photo above. Maureen Gaffney is now the artist Maureen Gaffney Wolfson, and she now swings a paintbrush instead of her boobs.

Trailer to The Black Klansman (1966):

 

Always on Saturday
(1966, dir. unknown)

Personally, we here at A Wasted Life have our doubts that Harry H. Novak had anything to do with this movie, but there are two sources that list this totally unknown, forgotten and possibly lost movie as a project fingered by Novak / Boxoffice: an online magazine called Funhouse and good ol' unreliable TCM, the latter of which also supplies the following plotline: "Tom, the town drunk, relates tales to his bartender of the weekend sexual adventures of their neighborhood friends."

Has Nothing to Do with the Movie — 

Andy Cavell singing Always on Saturday:

No credits to Always on Saturday, however, are listed anywhere, so we are also not 100% sure that the above poster is to the movie, but we would also say it seems a safe guess that it is, considering how closely TCM synopsis fits to the almost unreadable text at the lower right of the poster.

Pauly Dash, Leonor Montes and Dolores Carlos were seen as the names that would draw in "broad minded adults." Of Leonor Montes, we could find nothing, other than she seems to have appeared with Dolores Carlos and any equally unknown Maryland Chapman in the unknown, forgotten and possibly lost movie Indiscreet Stairway, which oddly enough is also from 1966, and glanced at elsewhere in this career review. Dolores Carlos, on the other hand, did a good dozen exploitation films between '59 and '69 before, like so many, disappearing. As for the comedian Pauly Dash, he appeared in even fewer movies but didn't just eventually disappear: he died in Miami, FL, on 2 February 1974. His only credited appearance in a "real" film was in the 1968 Frank Sinatra / Raquel Welch vehicle, Lady in Cement.

Trailer to
Lady in Cement (1968):
 


Flesh and Lace
(1965, writ & dir Joe Sarno)

Both TCM and the online magazine called Funhouse claim that Novak (in the form of Boxoffice International Film Distributors) had his fingers in the pie in this early film by the great Joseph W. Sarno (15 March 1921 — 26 April 2010), whom Wikipedia calls "One of the most prolific and distinctive auteurs to emerge from the proto-pornographic sexploitation film genre of the 1960s [...]."

Flesh and Lace is a "stripper character study", the plot of which is supplied here by DVD Drive-In: "New York City, 1964: Naive blonde Bev is the new girl in town, forced to work in a dimly-lit bar populated by topless dancers (including nudie-cutie regular June Roberts [as Gilda...]) and femme fatales who coerce numerous drinks out of loaded patrons. Even though Bev is one of the least effective bar girls in the joint, her guardian angel Joanie (Alice Linville, real name — Judy Young [...]) sticks up for her when bespectacled bar owner Dop (Norman Lind) threatens to throw her out on her ass. It seems our lovely heroine is a bit frigid and becomes uneasy at the thought of physical love... until she is swooped off her feet by Joanie's greasy gambler boyfriend Rook. Joanie will have none of that and sends Bev packing after beating her black and blue, but Bev finds solace in the arms of Julian, a sinister-yet-sweet toy store owner (familiar character actor Joe Santos) who loves her so much he calls up all his guy friends to feed her growing nymphomania in her basement dwelling. Like a spider devouring her prey, each man ventures into the cellar of the toy store to be sucked dry by the insatiable vixen. Meanwhile, back at Joanie's place, Rook's ever-growing debt gives her the bright idea of a toy store robbery... the same toy store in which Bev now resides..."

Scene from
Flesh and Lace:

Naked Fog
(1966, writ & dir Joe Sarno)

Another Sarno flick, aka Night Fog and Nackt für eine Nacht; again, both TCM and the online magazine called Funhouse claim that Novak (in the form of Boxoffice International Film Distributors) had his fingers in the pie of this early Sarno drama.

TCM saw the movie: "Marge (Tammy Latour), a jet set playgirl, visits relatives in a small harbor town. She meets Jack (George Quinn), owner of a marina, and is attracted by his rugged charm. Marge's brief affair with Jack ends when she discovers that he is a pimp; one night his teenage cousin, Marina (Gretchen Rudolph), interrupts their lovemaking to hand him her evening's earnings. Revolted, she turns in vain to an old boyfriend for consolation. Finally, she pairs off with Evan (Phil Mason), an unsophisticated young man who is the son of the local madam. The film concludes with the happy couple planning their future together."

The same year as Naked Fog, and also with Tammy Latour & Gretchen Rudolph, Joe Sarno filmed Moonlighting Wives...

Trailer to Joe Sarno's 
Moonlighting Wives (1966):
Joe Sarno's MOONLIGHTING WIVES from Joe Sarno on Myspace.

 

Paris Topless
(1966, dir. Gerald Perry).

"At first, there was the topless bathing suit, and we were sure that it wouldn't last. But it did. Then along came the topless waitresses and, here again, we were sure that this wouldn't last. Not only have the topless waitresses survived, but they have flourished and multiplied. And now we have in our midst the newest craze of all: the topless go-go dancer!"

Assuming that a Something Weird double feature of Harry Novak films would, in turn, present trailers to more Novak films, we look at the "Bra-Busting Sexploitation Trailers" presented in Harry Novak presents Street of a Thousand Pleasures / Way Out Topless: Street of a Thousand Pleasures, Forbidden Beauties, International Smorgasbroad, Paris Topless, Sexy Proibitissimo, Substitution and The Wonderful World of Girls. Of them, three (Street of a Thousand Pleasures [1972], Substitution [1970] and The Wonderful World of Girls [1965]) are known to have been pies in which Novak had his fingers, the rest we see as open to question — but, for the benefit of the doubt, we'll count them as have been fondled by Harry Novak. So, let's take a look at Paris Topless (1966), as far as we can tell the only known directorial effort of Gerald Perry — if one can even really speak of direction.

It is narrated by Joel Holt, the director of The Wild, Wild World of Jayne Mansfield (1968), among other films, and narrator of the mondos Chained Girls (1965 / trailer), It's a Sick, Sick, Sick World (1965 / trailer) and Mondo oscenità (1966 / trailer), and the only name dancer in the movie, going by the trailer, is Tempest Storm (born: Annie Blanche Banks), seen at the top of this entry in her prime.

Trailer to
The Wild, Wild World of Jayne Mansfield (1968):

But rest assured, you are never in Paris, Toto. The chain of action, as revealed by "Mr. Daddy-O" at this website: "Up first, eleven different strippers in 15 different minutes, each of whom, despite their costumes and props, end with their tits exposed for all the world to see. Then it's off to Baltimore's notorious 'Block' where a bunch of well-seasoned pros take it off in a variety of gloriously seedy strip joints.

"Eventually, we're whisked away to Paris where, as luck would have it, legendary strip queen Tempest Storm, 'The Greatest Topless of Them All,' is performing at a Parisian dive. And, my oh my, Miss Storm looks as young and as vibrant and as beautiful as when she made Paris After Midnight some 17 years earlier. In fact... Hey, wait a minute! It is Paris After Midnight! Yup, the 'Paris' in Paris Topless is actually footage from Paris After Midnight, made back in 1950! And, well… yeah, sure, it's a sneaky trick alright but, seriously, do you think anyone who saw Paris Topless even noticed?"

Trailer to
Paris Topless:

Sexploitation "trailer" von gregwallace

Indiscreet Stairway
(1966, dir. Ron Mart [as Ren Mart])

Aka Up the Naughty Staircase. Director Ron Mart (aka Ren Mart), a man of Doris Wishman-like talents, also made The Sexiest Story Ever Told (1970), The Hot Pearl Snatch (1966) — which inspired a Cramps song — and Naked Complex (1963 / trailer). We couldn't find a poster to this film here, but for that we found this vintage issue of Natural Herald, which features Dolores (ala Delores) Carlos on its cover; following her first credited appearance (as Dorothy Courtney) in Hideout in the Sun (1960), she was found in many a nudist movie in the early sixties, including Barry Mahon's The Beast That Killed Women (1965), which we looked at earlier, and this movie here. One of her last appearances was in HG Lewis's A Taste of Blood (1967).

Trailer to
A Taste of Blood (1967):

In regards to Indiscreet Stairway, Chateau Vulgaria calls the movie an "obscure nudie with lesbianism and a guillotine scene; no VHS or DVD release."

TCM explains a bit more: "The talking staircase in a French apartment building reveals the intimate lives of five of the building's tenants: two bikini-clad young women go swimming together; a muscleman who is pretending to be a painter uses a nude model; Marcy, a 15-year-old, skips school to attend a party with the milkman; and a woman whose husband is out of town showers and applies skin lotion before going to bed." We don't know which part Carlos plays, but we can imagine.

Also with Dolores (aka Delores) Carlos — 
Diary of a Nudist (1961, The Full Movie):

Hot Hands of Love

(1966, dir. unknown)

In fact, almost everything is unknown about this movie supposedly "presented" by Novak and produced by Rossmore Films. The American Film Institute Catalog of Motion Pictures, Vol. 1, Pt. 1 does offer a plot, however: "A gang of crazed killers terrorize New York. These sadists, who strike only pretty women, rob, torture, and murder their victims. Finally, the vengeful boyfriend of one of the women is able to track down the gang, and they are wiped out." Over at El Blog de Hola, in their obituary of the Puerto Rican stage actress Olga Agostini — "the Puerto Rican Ava Gardner" pictured above — they list this film as one of her film credits, thus making her the only name we could trace to the movie other than Novak's.

Mondo Keyhole 

(1966, dir. Jack Hill)

Original title: The Worse Crime of All. Novak distributed this early directorial effort from the great Jack Hill, who had already made Spider Baby (1964 / full movie) and went on to do The Big Bird Cage (1972), Coffy (1973) and much, much more before retiring much too early.

Trailer to Jack Hill's
The Big Bird Cage (1972):

Producer John Lamb, unknown and forgotten today, is credited as co-director and writer, but Jack Hill, who thinks the Mondo Keyhole "just a cheapo junk movie", once said "He [Lamb] took my name off Mondo Keyhole [...]. He had no directorial input into the film other than insisting on certain things — a little bondage, a rape scene, etc. — the usual recipe of the time." The first film of note by John Lamb, who started his film career by selling home-made nudie-cuties through the mail, is probably Mermaids of Tiburon (1962 / trailer); his directorial career in films seems to have ended (as M.C. von Hellen) with the "documentary" Sex Freaks (1974 / full NSFW art film), though he produced a porno film or two later on.

Scene from
Mondo Keyhole:

The One Sheet Index explains Mondo Keyhole which, despite the "mondo" in the title, has nothing to do with the mondo shockumentaries popular at the time: "Howard Thorne (Nick Moriarty) is a compulsive rapist. Or perhaps his savage attacks on women are only his fantasy, real though they may seem. But his twisted mind can no longer distinguish between reality and hallucination. With his beautiful wife, Vicki (Adele Rein), Thorne is strangely impotent, however, though she uses all the wiles her lush body can command to arouse his ardor. Frustrated, Vicki calms her seething passions with narcotics. Perhaps Thorne's inability to find sexual power without the violence and danger of forcible rape is due to his utter saturation by prurient sexual material which his mail-order business involves; he is a 'smut-peddler' on a grand scale, dealing with films, magazines, etc. Nevertheless, his obsession with rape drives him on, to seek victim after victim, until the inevitable mistake: he rapes a woman ('Carol', played by Carol Baughmann, below) whose homosexual companion is a vicious, man-hating Karate expert.

At a masked ball, Thorne attempts another rape. But in the struggle, the girl's mask is torn away to reveal — his wife! Confused, Thorne flees from the scene, but soon falls at the hands of the 'Crow' (the beautiful Cathy Crowfoot, below), the deadly Karate expert. She quickly beats Thorne senseless. He awakes to find himself in bondage, to suffer endless punishment for his crimes at the hands of the two cruel Lesbians.

Meanwhile, Vicki, dazed and hurt by the attempted rape, has again blotted out her consciousness with drugs. She finds herself, perhaps in a fantasy, in a wild nightmarish orgy, conducted on a tour of the inferno by a fiendish, masked character who resembles Satan. Thorne and Vicki both succumb to their respective fates, losing themselves in pure sexual fantasy."

Mondo Keyhole —
Pre-credit Introduction:

Go here for Part IV: 1967

The Wig / Gabal (Korea, 2005)

 

The cover of our German release DVD has a Circe-call like the best that any exploitation distributor could hope to achieve: the back of a hairless, bloodied scalp, two halves sewn together, with a bloodied hand forcing its way out and, branded into one half of the head, "CAUTION SICK SHIT". Yep, Harry Novak, David Freidman or Jerry Gross couldn't have done better: the presentation is 100% grindhouse and as inviting to people like us as a beautiful, dreamy-eyed, big-breasted babe who purrs "I swallow."

But like so many advertising campaigns of those former masters of exploitation, the way the The Wig is sold has little to do with the film itself. "SICK SHIT" might do well to describe such entertaining, over-the-top Japanese excesses as Tokyo Gore Police  (2008), Meatball Machine (2005), Vampire Girl vs Frankenstein Girl (2009) or the truly repulsive Zombie Ass: Toilet of the Dead (2011 / trailer), but in the case of this Korean movie here, which is unarguably closer in tone to the visually attractive Korean horror flick A Tale of Two Sisters (2003) or  Thai flick Shutter (2004) than any of the Japanese Pop Gore films just named, the description is way off base. The Wig is hardly "sick shit" — other than one scene, maybe, the one in which the cancer-suffering girls begins pulling pills out of her skull — it is a slow-moving but involving horror film that strolls casually but disturbingly to a truly depressing ending.

This is one you can watch with the girls, which isn't meant as an insult — The Haunting (1963 / trailer), one of our all time favorite films, is also one you can watch with the girls — it just means that there is a lot more art and artistic intention than exploitive drive, a lot more mood than shock, and a lot more emotion than adrenaline or blood — although enough shock and blood are indeed present. And it has a pretty good classical music soundtrack, too. The Wig is simply a fine example of a horror movie in which the filmmakers are obviously attempting to deliver more than just shocks: they realize they are working with a camera, and a camera can be used to make visuals, visuals that in turn serve to propel the story (and, on occasion, simply thrill for being original).

And let's not forget the concept of building and sustaining mood, something this depressing little flick does well, too. The human relationships and interaction in The Wig have as much of a sustained sense of desperation and unavoidable fate as the certain death of the fatally ill young woman who ends up with the titular wig. The characters move within the same circles on the same screen, they love or hate each other, they care or hurt each other, but as close as they are they are separated by walls of secrets and lies and desperation and unavoidable fate — a mixture into which comes The Wig, a cursed hairpiece of beautiful, long real human hair bought by sister Ji-hyeon (Yoo Sun) for her younger sister Soo-hyeon (Chae Min-seo), who is dying of leukemia and bald from chemo and medications. (Ji-hyeon is separated from her surrounding even more by the fact that she cannot speak, having lost her vocal cords in a terrible but disconcertingly aesthetic car accident, a handicap that simply echoes the sense of loss — loss of family, loss of love, loss of life — that threads through the entire movie.)

Like most Asian films, important plot points are inserted so quickly that if you're reaching for your beer you might miss them, but luckily, despite the occasional revelatory flashback, The Wig is relatively straightforward in its narrative: sick girl gets wig, wig makes her healthy and horny for sister's ex and suffer from an occasional nasty hallucination, without the wig — which kills a couple of people along the way — she withers away and has one foot deeper in the grave. What is a loving sister to do? Doubt and guilt hang heavy on the sister's shoulders — and, for some inexplicable reason, on the shoulder's her ex, though for most of the movie we know not why.

The scares of The Wig, a beautifully made movie dank with unavoidable doom, might not always make sense but they do tend to shock or scare, and are presented in a manner that, while often verging on being almost too beautiful or cinematic, nevertheless aggregate to support the movie's overriding, bleak sense of unavoidable fate. A bit slow at times, The Wig is nevertheless never boring, and keeps you mesmerized all the way to its extremely logical last scene, a truly depressing punch in the gut. Much more effective, in any event, than most Asian, hair-obsessed ghost flicks — One Missed Call (2003 / trailer), anybody?

Not that we have no complaints about The Wig. It attempts to be a bit too clever sometimes, as evidenced in its temporally non-consecutive narrative that the viewer never realizes is non-consecutive until almost the end of the movie. (In other words, the reason the opening scene of the almost-car accident makes no real sense it because it is not the actually start of the movie but a scene of a later point in time.) An unneeded complication to the narrative. Likewise, why the young female student is killed on the bus — we hear about in the news, Soo-hyeon hallucinates it at one point, and the young girl herself sees scary strands of hair when taking a photo — makes no real sense: she had nothing to do with any of the characters other than she took a photo for them, so why did the wig kill her? And, lastly, like so many movies — 28 Weeks Later (2007), anyone? — The Wig relies too dearly upon the fortuitous coincidence typical of Hollywood plotting to drive its story: Seoul, where the movie is set, is a city of almost 10 million inhabitants, and thus must have well over, dunno, a couple of tens of thousand wig shops at least and, naturally, even more wigs. But somehow, of all the wigs in the entire city, sister Ji-hyeon not only buys a wig cursed with an angry killer entity, but a wig — and the corresponding angry spirit — that is also directly linked, we learn along the way, to her immediate circle, namely her estranged x-boyfriend Ki-Seok.*

But: Hey! It's the movies, things like that happen. And in real life, some people actually buy winning lottery tickets, which are surely rarer than possessed wigs.  In any event: The Wig — a downer of a film, but two thumbs up from A Wasted Life.

*We won't go deeper into the wig/ex connection, 'cause it does involve one of the more original and surprising twists of the flick.

The Brides of Dracula (Great Britain, 1960)

(Spoilers.) We are not impressed. The second of the three Dracula movies made by Terence Fisher for Hammer, The Brides of Dracula is also the second of a grand total of eight Hammer productions featuring the famed Count — and also the only one not to feature Christopher Lee in the title role (but then, Dracula himself never even shows up in this movie, and is only referred to twice in passing). Wherever it sits in the cannon of Hammer vampire films, it is without a doubt one of the most overrated of all the "classic" Hammer horror films. Indeed, rather than the stellar reputation it seems to have, The Brides of Dracula should better be qualified as one of Hammer's great turkeys.

As normal with all Hammer films neither the costumes nor sets nor babes can be faulted. Likewise — but for the titular bloodsucker — the movie also features fairly decent casting and some good acting. The story itself, however, is an illogical mess overpopulated with tertiary characters. The script is little more than a variety of unbelievable elements strung together so badly that it could easily and believably be attributed to Ed Wood Jr. rather than the 3 or 4 names listed in the credits (one name of which is Jimmy Sangster).

The Brides of Dracula starts with a voiceover informing us that though Count Dracula is dead, the world is still populated by his evil disciples — though in this case, the "world" seems to be Transylvania sometime in the late 19th century. Marianne Danielle (Yvonne Monlaur of Circus of Horrors [1960 / trailer]) is on her way by stagecoach from Paris to teach at the all-girl Lang Academy, but along the way her stagecoach driver deserts her at an obscure roadside Gasthaus. Of course the landlord warns her to leave the area before nightfall, but Marianne obviously lacks the brains needed to be frightened. Baroness Meinster (Martita Hunt) shows up, and before Marianne can say "I am young and stupid and want to die," she accepts an invitation to spend the night at the Baroness' big, eerie castle. At first, the only other person in the castle seems to be the decidedly unfriendly and strange servant Greta (Freda Jackson of The Valley of Gwangi [1969]), but then Marianne discovers that the Baroness has her supposedly dead (and oddly fey) son Baron Meinster (David Peel) chained to a wall in another room. He reveals not that he is a vampire and that the Baroness brings him young and naive girls to feed upon, but rather that the Baroness has told everyone that he is dead and keeps him chained up so as to keep control of his rightful inheritance. In no time short, Marianne steals the key to the shackles and sets the man free. Perversely enough — and perhaps the only disturbing idea in the movie — he promptly takes advantage of his new freedom to sink his fangs into his mother's neck.

Marianne, frightened by the body of the dead Baroness and the crazed, cackling servant runs out into the night where she is eventually found unconscious but unharmed by Dr. Van Helsing (some actor named Peter Cushing), who in due course drops her off at the Lang Academy. Between a lot of interplay between forgettable characters, Van Helsing kills the now undead Baroness and Baron Meinster sucks on the neck of a few maidens and proposes marriage to Marianne, who promptly accepts. (She obviously is not only of inferior intelligence, but is also highly forgetful and half blind.) But luckily Dr. Van Helsing is there to come to the rescue and, by the end of the film, not only is Marianne still alive but everyone evil is dead.

Though the sight of a blonde, dandy-looking and decidedly un-charismatic vampire is a bit jarring at first, it is hardly the biggest of the numerous flaws in The Brides of Dracula. Marianne is slightly better cast, but while she indeed good looking and hardly someone you would kick out of bed, she is such an idiot that one begins to wish that she would get what she deserves and die. Likewise, unlike in the other Dracula films, this time around Van Helsing comes across as a bit of an incompetent klutz with little vampire-hunting experience. But worse than these mistakes in characterization (and an overpopulation of characters which serve no real purpose to the plot) is the laughable lack of logic inherent to the disjointed script. Baron Meinster can change into a bat and magically unlock windows, but is incapable of escaping from a shackle around the leg? (Oh, yeah: the chain was silver — so why didn't his leg burst into flame and/or rot?) When Van Helsing gets bitten by Meinster, why is he the only one to wake up early and not undead? And since when does burning the bite with a hot iron and pouring a little holy water disinfect the wound and prevent the final conversion? Would any woman — other than the most money-hungry gold digger — really say "Yes" to a marriage proposal under the circumstances Marianne does?* (Aside from all the sinister events that occur in the Baron's shadow, they only meet twice and never even actually kiss!) And, really! Who the hell thought up the retarded idea of having the not-so-big and not-so-bad vampire being killed by the cross-shaped shadow of a windmill? (Can shadows only kill when cast advertently?) With flaws like this, it becomes easy to overlook some of the most fake-looking plastic fangs to ever grace the silver screen — but, regrettably, it never becomes easy not to laugh whenever vampy gets all beady-eyed in blood lust. And lets not mention the bat.

The Brides of Dracula is a film for completionists and people born without brains. If you are neither, then don't bother with this lousy piece of flyshit, the only truly redeeming quality of which (aside from the Gothic trappings, color, sets & costumes) is the typically top notch Hammer cleavage quotient.

*OK, maybe the times were different then — marriage was more financial security than anything else.

Short Film: King Star King (USA 2013)

Naw, no one's paid us to make this oddity our Short Film of the Month — we doubt enough people watch our choices that it would be worth it for anyone to do so — but this time around we're presenting a pilot episode aired last November on Adult Swim that has since been greenlit and, sometime this year, should get another half-dozen episodes. God only knows where the fuck the show is gonna go, but we do like the pilot: idiotic, tasteless, sexist, immature, badly drawn, ultraviolent, big-boob fixated, drug and alcohol heavy — a perfect mirror of sorts for today's male youth. As Bubble Blabber says: "Basically: King Star King is [...] like one of Hunter S. Thompson's wet dreams."

King Star King was created by some dude named JJ Villard, yet-another graduate of Cal Arts, "and developed by Tommy Blacha." JJ Villard previously directed the shorts Son of Satan (2003), based on a Bukowski story, and Chestnuts Icelolly (2004). He also does some groovy artwork, an example of which — inspired by Goya — is presented below.

The plot, as explained by Toonami, who for some reason calls the muscle-bound, testosterone-laden anti-hero "punk" when we see him more as heavy metal: "King Star King features a punk rock, modern day he-man who falls from the realm of the gods to land as a fry cook in a slummy waffle joint. King Star King must regain his memory to defeat the evil (and adorable) Spring Bunny and rescue his love, the megababe Princess Snow White. Only then will King Star King regain his rightful place in the heavens."

Enjoy King Star King: