GIRL IN A BASKET (1970)

A porno flick that starts out with a girl being kidnapped then raped in all inputs and even tortured with pliers isn't the kind of movie you would think would have a happy ending. Amazingly enough this one kinda does. There's a tease of a castration but sadly only a tease. Woulda made the movie a lot more exciting but probably not for the perverts in the audiences back then. Only in 1970's porn would rapist fantasies like this exist. It sure was a different time. It's worth seeing this oddity just for the sickness aspect of it but it does get pretty boring after awhile. The movie's only a little over an hour long but it's all basically one scene of three people screwing. This one's really only for Rene Bond completists as she looks good throughout her "ordeal".

GLEN OR GLENDA (1953)

Not only directed by but also starring the great Ed Wood as Glen/Glenda the cross-dressing transvestite fellow. This one is up their with PLAN 9 as one of the most entertaining of Woods' picures. It's basically the story of a guy who likes to wear angora sweaters and panties and how he's gonna tell his wife and what she's gonna do about this news. The wraparound features include Bela Lugosi spouting off strange sayings almost poetry-like over scenes of buffalos stampeding and other weird stock footage and a policeman going to a doctor to try and make sense of a tranny who commits suicide because society doesn't understand him. Is it inept filmmaking or is there actually a deeper message about intolerance about fetishes? Maybe a little of both but either way I find it an entertaining diversion and way above most of the standard 1950's cult movies.

One of the greatest monologues in film history?:

NYMPHS ANONYMOUS (1968)

This 60's sexploitation quickie is cleary attempting to be a comedy of some sort but it's just too weird and disturbing to be funny. I do realize that most of these movies are made by men, with the obvious exception of the Doris Wishman ones, and they exist in a strange male fantasy world where women are sex-crazed at all times but this one goes off on some weird tangents. A typical "funny" moment is when our heroine tells her psychiatrist she was sexually abused by her father when she was young, he tells her that she must feel terrible about this, to which she replies "no, I just feel terrible telling anyone how bad in bed he was". Now who exactly is that written to make laugh? Dads who fuck their daughters? And that's the kind of humor that we're dealing with in this one. Most of the jokes aren't really that offensive though just really lame. So besides the terrible attempts at being funny there are lots of parts that drag, which is kinda typical with these 60's sex flicks in general. There is a great scene where the husband who has been cheated on, by his nympho wife, puts on a rubber Halloween mask and goes on a killing rampage, which wouldn't seem like it should be in this movie at all except so many strange things like that happen that's it's not that out of place.

Cigarette out of a donkey's ass and a feminist speech. Weird way to start out your sexploitation flick:

A BUCKET OF BLOOD (1959)

 Dick Millers greatest role?  Probably.  I mean out of the tons of things he's been in he wasn't really the star of many things I can think of.  This AIP studios classic, directed by b-movie great Roger Corman, is a simple story of a schlub named Walter Paisley(Miller) whose life sucks.  Who can't relate to that?  Our sympathy shifts though after he starts murdering people for his artwork which makes him popular but ultimately seals his doom.  I guess the lesson is don't try to please the popular people because they're mostly jackasses anyway.  At least that's the way I see it.  This would be a pretty nihilistic movie it it wasn't done in such a lighthearted goofy way.  Silly beat-nicks, retarded poetry, bad art jazz man.  It all adds up to good times.  Look for it on some cheap-ass DVD label near you or for free online. Miller went on to use the Paisley name in a few other flicks as well. This was HG Lewis' inspiration for COLOR ME BLOOD RED which is one of Lewis' worst movies so stick with this one.

Come to the land of living dreams?:

 

It's true, life really is an obscure hobo bumming a ride on the omnibus of art:

DON"T GO IN THE WOODS (1981)

While not the worst slasher movie I've ever seen DON"T GO IN THE WOODS loses a lot of points for me simply because it's so god-damned annoying. The main thing I'm talking about is the strange abrasive use of wacky sound effects throughout the whole movie. I'm not sure if it's supposed to throw you off while watching and create some kinda spooky mood but it just serves to piss me off and ruin what could be a much better slasher. I rewatched this recently after reading about director James Bryan in the AMERICAN NIGHTMARE book. He is an interesting guy and I would love to see his early sex films, they look quite bizarre. This movie just never seems to come together for me. Some of the murders are pretty brutal and very bloody but there's no rhyme or reason for anything that happens.  A guy murders campers and that's the whole plot!  Brilliant.

Oh Dick:

STILL SMOKIN (1983)

As the 1980's dragged on like a cancerous growth Cheech & Chong seemed to be less relevant and equally less funny. Thank you Ronald Reagan, Madonna & Charles In Charge for a progressively shittier decade. This does still have its moments( I particularly enjoy the idiocy of the Dope-A-Thon and Queers In Space segments) but it's not up their with their earlier stuff. They followed this one up with their last movie THE CORSICAN BROTHERS, featuring a very toned-down lame-ass version of the duo. It's a movie that I've never felt the need to revisit since seeing it and being bored as a kid. After that it was all over, as far as movies go, and they split up. So enjoy this for what it is.

SHE MOB (1968)

My new favorite movie(at least for this week). Sort of a mix of the insanity of a Russ Meyer movie with the sleazy weirdness of a John Waters film. SHE MOB stars a cast of unknowns from Texas who unfortunately seem like they have gone on to do nothing else of note. There's not even a director credited on the print I saw. So who knows what lunatic came up with this nuttiness. The main character is a large manly lesbian named appropriately enough Big Shim who puts out cigarettes in bellybuttons and loves the idea of castrating men. Her arch nemesis is private detective Sweetie East( an obvious take-off on 60's TV character Honey West) who is played by Monique Duval, who did appear in a couple of movies in France, if IMDB is correct, before sinking into obscurity. Features terrible 60's breast implants with visible scars. The sex scenes are retarded, the violence is just something wet & damp & dark smeared on body parts and the acting is atrocious but this thing has got to be the most entertainingly crappy sexploitation movie I have ever seen. If you thought FASTER, PUSSYCAT! KILL! KILL! was too well done, this is the grungey lowlife movie for you. I think I wanna be Big Shim for Halloween.

A thrilling poker game between some tough broads breaks out:

YOR: THE HUNTER FROM THE FUTURE (1983)

Italian director Antonio Margheriti should have won some kind of an award for making the most wacky knockoff movies in history. From 1960's musclemen Hercules movies to cheap-ass sci-fi stuff to horror to cannibal movies the guy has done it all and usually in the most absurd way possible. In this tale we not only get a half-assed CONAN THE BARBARIAN takeoff but it also ends up being a spaghetti STAR WARS flick by the end credits. You get dinosaurs that look like they were made from paper mache, robots that look like Darth Vader, laser gun fights, purple people, retarded cavemen and Yor even gets his very own 80's theme song. It's all very silly but fun at the same time. There's supposed to be a 4 hour version of this out there that was shown on Italian TV as a miniseries. I'm not sure if I could stand that much wackiness.

PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE (1959)

This has got to be the best movie that has been labeled the worst movie of all time. I mean it's not dull like a ton of other worse movies I can think of. The acting might not be great but it's not the worst I've seen. I think this would only be called the worst by someone who hasn't dug very deep into the cinematic muck that's out there. Even if we're just gonna go by the low-budget to call it bad there are a billion shot-on-video pieces of shit that have less of an aesthetic value than this. Features Bela Lugosi, Tor Johnson and Vampira. How could you possibly make the worst movie with a cast of that magnitude?  Just for its camp value alone you would have to label this a classic, which also describes most of Ed Wood's other movies.

“You earthlings are stupid, stupid, stupid!”

ONECHANBARA: BIKINI SAMURAI SQUAD (2008)

Completely uninteresting crap from Japan.  On paper it looks awesome.  I mean how can you go wrong with beautiful bikini wearing samurai Japanese girls fighting zombies?  Well I'll tell you how.  First you adapt it from a video game and make the special effects look just like they do in the game.  If that's not enough to turn you off you also get dubbing that sounds like retarded children were hired for that job.  I didn't watch the subtitled version because I couldn't imagine sitting through this thing twice.  Amazingly enough there is a sequel to this out there.  I can't believe there was a big demand for it though.  Goes by a bunch of titles: CHANBARA BEAUTY,  ZOMBIE BIKINI SQUAD & ZOMBIE KILLER: SEXY AS HELL among others.  I would avoid them all.

CHEECH AND CHONG'S NEXT MOVIE (1980)

Cheech & Chong's follow-up to their movie debut UP IN SMOKE. It's not like any of these movies were great works of art but they were funny and I find that this one works just as well as the first for me. Cheech plays his cousin Red for half the movie and him and Chong get into most of the wacky hijinks. Features a take off on CLOSE ENCOUNTERS with some outer spacedust, the Mexican-Americans song, tons of weed smoking of course, Pee Wee Herman, a red Hulk character named Wamba played by that BODY BY JAKE guy, the guy from POLICE ACADEMY who makes the sound effects with his mouth, Edie McClurg as a pot-smoking grandma,and even Elvira without her makeup in a tiny part. Definitely worth checking out ya hippie.

SINTHIA, THE DEVIL'S DOLL (1970)

God, I hate this movie. SINTHIA is the story of this annoying little twat who is obsessively in love with her father and jealous of her mother. So one day she sees them making love and kills them both in a fit of illogical rage. This all happens at the very beginning of the movie so then for the next 80 minutes or so we are treated to pitiful ass-wipe Sinthia whining and crying about what she did. She repeats "Daddy, where are you?" and crap like that ad nauseam until you feel like the movie is intentionally trying to torture you with its pseudo-artsy-fartsy nonsense. The whole thing has the feel of a really bad LSD-inspired nightmare, but not in a good way. Director Ray Dennis Steckler, disguising himself here under the name Sven Christian, has done some good horror flicks (THE THRILL KILLERS) and some fun bizarre kid flicks (RAT FINK A BOO BOO) but he should stay away from attempting art-house bullshit. There is a ton of nudity on display but it's all presented in such an unappealing manner that I can't imagine it would turn anyone on.

This group turned the movie into a music video, not sure if it's any better that way but at least it's shorter and you can't hear Sinthia's grating voice:

Westerbergs serves Hospitalfood - "Sinthia, the devils doll" from Hospitalfood.be on Vimeo.

555 (1988)

The only reason I bought this 1980's shot-on-video slasher flick is because I know how very rare it is. Of course sometimes things are rare for a good reason. The reason this is probably rare is because it's a pretty unwatchable piece of crap. It took me a couple of tries but I did make it through the whole stupid thing. It's movies like this(and calling it a movie is being very polite of me) that makes a person appreciate what HG Lewis did about 20 years earlier. I mean Lewis' films look like fuckin' masterpieces compared to this garbage. Shooting on video looked like shit in the 80's and for the most part it still does today so I guess I shoulda known better. Go watch BLOOD FEAST again instead.

On the other hand if anyone does like this movie there's a guy on Youtube who bought the rights to it and was selling a bunch of stuff from the movie on there and re-releasing it on DVD. Here's a promo for that release: