GUMS (1976)

 I had the pleasure of seeing Brother Theodore live in New York City when I was in my 20's and have been a huge fan of his bizarre stylings ever since. I can't say he's really been represented all that well in film though, usually just making small appearances. I think NOCTURNA is the film that I most identified him with until I saw this one and NOCTURNA is not exactly the best movie in the world. GUMS on the other hand is, while also not the best movie ever, an absurdly delightful porn(the version I caught was softcore but bordering on being hard) parody of JAWS that plays almost like a Mel Brooks' movie with naughty bits. I was lucky enough to catch this one at the local weirdo theater and it's definitely a great watch with a group of like-minded cretins. Where else can you see Brother Theodore playing a Nazi named Captain Carl Clitoris go up against a blowjob-giving murderous mermaid or a movie that ends in a bizarre puppet show?
 There is apparently a hardcore version of this available for the hardcore perverts though I found the censorship(covering genitals with pieces of meat and kosher certificates) in the soft version pretty humorous in itself.

                                                     Uncensored lesbian scene!:



                                                                  British VHS!:

Titillating porn double feature!:

MASSAGE PARLOR MURDERS! (1973)

 This one seems like it coulda been a porn flick but the producers decided at the last minute to try and make something slightly more respectable. What we get is a tough one to recommend because it never gets as sleazy as you hope but it's still entertaining. Mostly for me this was due to an appearance of Brother Theodore who does his whole insane act while being interrogated by a couple of cops investigating a string of sorta-gory(with really bad sub-HG Lewis fx-work) killings of massage parlor employees/hookers. Things never get as sexy as you might suspect besides a bit of nudity and one not explicit at all sex scene. If ol' Theodore hadn't of shown up and there wasn't so much excellent footage of 42nd Street in it's grimy heyday this would probably be a lot lower on my groovy goodness scale. Check it out if you wanna see what feels like a long bad episode of STARSKY AND HUTCH with tits and blood.




             Re-released in a shorter and re-edited version as MASSAGE PARLOR HOOKERS:

NOCTURNA (1979)

While I am a big fan of the 70's as a decade in general I am not a huge fan of disco. I'm especially not a fan of bland generic-sounding disco and that's unfortunately what a lot of this stuff sounds like to me. This film is filled with stupid scenes of disco dancing and terrible music. In addition to this terror it's also a horror/comedy-spoof, one of the most dreaded of all sub-genres! As in just about every other spoof-type film no laughter is evoked by anyone with half a brain, just a realization that you are wasting your time watching anything like this. The reason I watched this and the only reason to watch this at all is to see the great Brother Theodore who wasn't in nearly enough films and isn't really in enough of this one either. He does get to give a speech and utter the classic line "where there is death, there is hope" so that's a plus in a film without much else going on to recommend it. In addition to Theodore, John Carradine appears as Dracula in an embarrassing performance uttering lines like "If I'm dead why do I have to pee-pee?". Lily Munster(Yvonne DeCarlo) plays his wife so at least they got to cash-in on their past glories.