HUMANOIDS FROM THE DEEP

1980/USA/Directed by Barbara Peeters

It’s not too surprising that Humanoids from the Deep would prove to be one of the bigger hits of producer Roger Corman’s prolific career. Like Joe Dante’s Piranha (another Corman production released a year earlier in 1979), Humanoids from the Deep contained all the elements that brought kids and young adults to the drive-in and suburban cinemas in droves during those last few glorious years of the grindhouse, before the burgeoning home video market exploded and enabled many of us to indulge our cinematic perversions in the comfort and privacy of our own lounge room.

And paramount among these elements was, of course, the melding of sex and horror, precariously balanced so that the women averted their eyes in terror and revulsion while the male sitting beside them try to desperately hide (or relieve) their hard-ons.

Inspired by The Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954), Jaws (1975) and the aforementioned Piranha, as well as Del Tenny’s fun 1964 romp The Horror of Party Beach, Humanoids from the Deep follows a similar plot device used in many of the ecological horror films of the 1970s. In the small Californian fishing village of Noyo, a conglomerate planning to build a huge canning factory nearby has been experimenting with a growth serum designed to increase the size of the local salmon, but instead succeeds only in creating a school of green, humanoid-like creatures who rise out of the ocean to tear apart the men and (surprise) mate with the women. Naturally, by the time our hero (fisherman Doug McClure) and heroine (scientist Ann Turkel) figure what is going on, it’s too late to stop the creatures from going on a rape and kill rampage during the opening night of the annual village carnival.

While it’s an overall enjoyable romp that hits all the exploitation targets, Humanoids from the Deep unfortunately stops short of being a genuine cult pleasure. Joe Dante’s Piranha worked so well because it combined the director’s genuine love for the genre with John Sayle’s witty screenplay and a roster of actors who bought the characters to life - including Bradford Dillman, Dick Miller, Barbara Steele, Kevin McCarthy and Heather Menzies. In Humanoids from the Deep, the cast seem to be mostly going through the motions, alternately looking bored and confused, with only Vic Morrow as a gruff, booze-swilling fisherman providing any real frisson.

When director Barbara Peeters handed in her finished cut of the film, Executive Producer Corman felt the film was lacking in the required exploitative elements, and had second unit director James Sbardellati beef-up the sex and blood quota, including some explicit shots of the humanoids raping bikini-clad beach gals which left Peeters very unimpressed.

Highlights of Humanoids from the Deep include the creature costumes designed by future make-up/FX superstar Rob Bottin, James Horner’s music score, the sight of young ventriloquist David Strassman getting torn apart just as he (and his dummy) are about to score with a young nubile nude in a tent (this will please those who found Strassman’s frequent appearance on Hey Hey It’s Saturday throughout the 90s to be extremely grating), and an all too brief appearance by bubbly blonde (and criminally underused and underrated) Linda Shayne as the Salmon Queen.

Shout! Factory’s 30th anniversary DVD release of Humanoids from the Deep gives the film the full treatment, including a new anamorphic widescreen transfer of the uncut international version of the film (which bore the simple title of Monster), deleted scenes, making-of featurette, trailers and radio/TV ad spots, a short clip of Leonard Maltin discussing the film with Corman, and a color booklet.

Copyright John Harrison 2011

VALE JEAN ROLLIN

Another horror icon sadly gone...RIP poetic French director Jean Rollin, who created some of the most surreal, atmospheric, erotic and beautiful horror films ever made. I remember buying David Pirie's 1977 book The Vampire Cinema while on vacation in Cairns (Far North Queensland) when I was a kid, and was mesmerized by the stills and poster images from Rollin's films that were in it...I was in love with his films for years before I even got to see any of them, and when I finally did I fell in love with them all over again and in a totally different way...

http://www.shockingimages.com/rollin/interview.htm

KILLER CRABS Paperback Review

KILLER CRABS by Guy N. Smith
(1978/New English Library/UK)

Often downgraded as the poor man’s James Herbert (The Rats), Guy N. Smith was one of the most pure pulp writers of the 1970s. With no pretence to literary art, Smith authored some of the most visceral, arousing and downright exciting horror novels from that era, all of which were tailor made for the paperback medium.

A published writer from the age of 12 (when he contributed to his local newspaper), Smith had a career in banking forced upon him by his father, before he broke the shackles with his first book Werewolf by Moonlight, published by NEL in 1974. It marked the beginning of an intensely prolific career for Smith, who now has over 60 horror novels to his credit, not to mention a number of crime thrillers (he wrote a serial killer book, The Hangman, under the pseudonym of Gavin Newman), and his 1996 volume Writing Horror Fiction (A&C Black), a how-to manual for aspiring writers wanting to break into the genre.

Killer Crabs was the second and best of Smith’s series of Crabs books (the original, Night of the Crabs, having been published in 1976), and provides a great summation of his prowess as a writer. The premise of the series is one of pure B-grade schlock: an army of giant, ravenous crabs bob up from time to time at various exotic locales around the globe, wreaking havoc and snacking on the locals.

After being driven out of Wales in the first novel, the crabs this time resurface in the sunny far north of Australia, where they settle down to spawn in the mangrove swamps not far from the popular Hayman Island holiday resort. After treating us to an expected opening chapter crab attack (aboard a small fishing trawler), Smith settles in to introduce us to his cast of cliched but delightfully sleazy cast of characters, including Klin, the ruggedly-handsome, G I Joe - type action man, big game hunter Harvey Logan, British scientist Clifford Davenport (returning from the first novel), and holidaying sexpot Caroline du Brunner, who beds everything in sight bar the crabs, and whose sexual adventures Smith details with an enthusiastic gusto that would have doubled the pleasure of any young male who had picked the book up expecting a mere horror story.

‘Klin began to push forward with his thighs, slowly and purposefully at first, then speeding up as his tension mounted. Her eyes were closed. She was breathing heavily, her whole body stiffening, jerking, convulsing inwardly. Her legs shot upwards bicycling, faster and faster, and her fingernails tore viciously at his shoulders and back. Seconds later she was going crazy with passion beneath him, pushing her thighs at him, grinding her pubic bone on his as she sought desperately for an even deeper penetration.’

The scenes of carnage in the book are equally exciting, as the crabs multiply at enormous rate and move inlands towards the resort, a trail of death and destruction littering their wake. Smith revels in describing these scenes with a sadistic glee, bringing forth images of a gaudy, EC-inspired 1950s horror comic, as this passage describing the demise of a Japanese fishing captain amply illustrates:

'The crab was astride the captain, its legs holding him firmly, whilst the pincers, almost delicately, explored his body in search of another limb to amputate.

Helplessly the crew watched, some of them being sick with revulsion. It reminded them of a spider finding a fly caught in its web, and instead of devouring it immediately preferring to torture its victim by ripping off a leg at a time.

The severed wrist still spouted blood, a bright red fountain which sprayed over the crab, rendering it an even more horrific spectacle. Almost effortlessly the pincer found the shoulder joint and with a loud crunch removed the whole arm. Then, seconds later, the captain’s other arm suffered an identical fate.’

With its winning combination of action, gore, sex and never a dull moment plot, it’s surprising that an adaptation of Smith’s crab paperbacks never made it to the cinema (or even the straight-to-video shelf). With the plethora of shoddy Jaws clones that were festering flea pit cinemas during this time (Tintorera, Grizzly, etc.), I would have thought that a film about man-eating crabs would have had every cigar chomping schlock producer foaming at the mouth (I can just see the poster, depicting a horde of the ugly titular creatures emerging from the red-tinged surf, a screaming, bikini-clad young woman clenched between the triumphant claws of the leader crab!).

Copyright John Harrison 2010

THE KILLING KIND

USA/1973/Directed by Curtis Harrington

Directed by one-time experimentalist filmmaker Curtis Harrington, The Killing Kind remains one of the best examples of early-seventies sick sinema. The film borrows its ideas and themes from a number of sources - most notably Psycho - and blends them into a strong psychological thriller that is murky and dark without being relentlessly depressing.

The film opens on a deserted beach, where a group of male youths are enjoying their pack rape of a young tease named Tina (Susan Bernard, the pretty little imp from Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!). Although Terry (John Savage) is an unwilling (and unable) participant in the activities, he is the only one who is charged for the crime, and ends up spending two years in jail. Upon his release, he returns to live with his mother (Terry Southern) in an old, moody boarding house filled with mostly elderly women for tenants.

Almost immediately, we can see that the relationship between Terry and his mother is a little bit off-kilt. He calls her Thelma instead of ‘mom’, they kiss each other on the lips, she fondles his hair playfully, and they indulge in physical wrestling matches. Although Harrington never fully exploits it, there is an obvious sexual tension between mother and son, and the performances by Savage and Southern are terrific, and the chemistry in their scenes together strong and electric.

The Killing Kind is a film filled with ugly, repressed characters. When a frustrated neighbour (the wonderful Luana Anders) visits Terry at night, she tells him “It must feel wonderful….being raped. I wouldn‘t have told on you”. Oddly enough, it’s Terry who emerges as one of the film’s most sympathetic characters - even though he degenerates into a sadistic, psychotic killer, he seems as much an oedipal victim as a brutal monster.

What little humour is present in The Killing Kind is extremely black in tone. Terry and Thelma work themselves into fits of laughter talking about how one of the elderly boarders died after having a seizure and falling into the frozen foods cabinet at the local supermarket. In the words of Thelma: “She became a frozen stiff”. In another surprise sequence, when pretty young Lori (future Laverne & Shirley star Cindy Williams) tells Terry to “Loosen up”, he responds by trying to drown her in the swimming pool!

By the end of the film, we realise that Terry’s time in jail have had little to do with his present state of unbalance. The character he has become is what he was always destined to be, probably since early childhood. His killing of Tina and the female lawyer he holds responsible for putting him behind bars doesn’t purge him of his homicidal rage. It merely opens the floodgates to his true self, and he soon turns his attentions to the innocent Lori.

A film deserving of more praise than it currently receives, The Killing Kind was for years only available on long out-of-print VHS, until finally being released on DVD in 2007 by Dark Sky Films in a nice, uncut anamorphic widescreen print (along with an interview with Harrington recorded not long before his death).



Copyright John Harrison 2010

MACHETE

USA/2010/Directed by Robert Rodriguez & Ethan Maniquis

In 2007, Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino, perhaps the ultimate ‘fan boy’ directors of the past 15 years, teamed up for Grindhouse, their valentine to all those gloriously tacky, often violent and always sexy drive-in exploitation double-bills of the 1970s. Unfortunately, the finished film turned out to be little more than an interesting misfire, amusing and enjoyable but one that could have - and should have - been so much more.

But one clear highlight of Grindhouse (in its original cinematic format) were the fake trailers shown at the beginning of the film and in-between the two features (Planet Terror and Death Proof). In particular, the faux trailers for Eli Roth’s sick slasher Thanksgiving and Rodriguez’s revenge actioner Machete garnered great audience reaction and were singled out as being worthy of expansion into features.

While we’re still waiting for Roth to come through, Rodriguez (along with co-director Ethan Maniquis) has answered the call by turning his two-minute long Machete trailer into a 104 minute ballet of outrageous and highly stylised comic book violence. Low on plot, high on splatter, tongue planet firmly in cheek.

Machete (Danny Trejo) is a former Mexican Federale, now an illegal immigrant doing day labour jobs on the streets of Texas after he is left for dead (and his wife is killed) by slimy drug lord Torrez (Steven Seagal, pilling on the pounds and sporting an hilarious toupee). Reluctantly, Machete accepts an offer from spin doctor Benz (Jeff Fahey) to assassinate McLaughlin (Robert De Niro) a corrupt Senator. The expectant double-cross sees Machete on the run, hacking his way through the bad guys with everything from weed whackers to surgical instruments and seeking help from a sultry taco slinger and leader of a rebel group (Michelle Rodriguez), his Padre brother (Cheech Marin), and the sexy immigration agent Sartana (Jessica Alba, who has the distinction of being both the film‘s worst actor and it‘s best-named character). Also along for the ride are Don Johnson as a trigger-happy border vigilante, make-up effects maestro Tom Savini as a hitman and Lindsay Lohan, who seems to have every one of her vices and exploits etched on her 24 year-old face and spends most of her scenes drugged-out or naked, before donning a nun’s habit and going postal (in what is either a smirk at Lohan’s public persona or just a simple nod to Zoe Tamerlis’ character in Abel Ferrara’s 1981 classic Ms. 45).

Naturally, this being a homage to low-grade seventies sinema, the film has a washed-out look, with deliberate scratches and jumps, retro fonts on the opening credits and some funky porn music on its soundtrack (not to mention a pretty silly nod to the famous bionic sound effect used in The Six Million Dollar Man). But while Rodriguez clearly has a genuine affection for the cinema that inspired Machete, and it shows his commitment in that he went ahead with the film even after the box-office failure of Grindhouse, there is still something disappointingly fake about the movie. Perhaps it’s all the blatant CGI violence, so over-the-top at times that it actually becomes quite tiresome. Or maybe it’s because these films weren’t made to be shown in suburban multiplexes filled with bratty designer-clothed kids and the latest Harry Potter epic playing next door. They were made to be watched as the bottom feature on an all-niter at the suburban drive-in, or in grotty, musty shoebox cinemas that have stained screens and play hardcore porn films every other day.

Maybe it’s because you just can’t make ‘em the way you used to, no matter how sincere you might be.

Still, if you can deal with the film’s forced hipness, Machete, anchored by the presence and raw charisma of 66 year-old Trejo in his first starring role, offers up enough visceral thrills to make a passable time-filler, best enjoyed with a couple of friends and a few cold beers. But it’s no substitute for the real thing.

Copyright John Harrison 2010

A TEENAGER IN BABYLON

(Note: the following short story was my entry in the 2010 'Essence of St. Kilda' short story competition).

A TEENAGER IN BABYLON
by John Harrison

St. Kilda in 1981.

Twenty-nine years ago.

If I close my eyes and try hard enough, I can often still smell that distinct, peculiar odour of rotting carpet, dirty ice and teenage sweat that would fill the dank, cavernous expanse of the St. Moritz ice skating rink which sat on the rim of the Upper Esplanade, overlooking Port Phillip Bay, the majestic art deco arch of the Palais Theatre and the iconic, gaping big-mouth entrance to Luna Park. St. Moritz had first opened its doors in 1921, and had been the place where my parents had met many, many midnights earlier, but by 1981 the building - just like much of St. Kilda itself - was in a state of decay and disrepair, and was only a few months away from closing its grand doors for good (after which it would stand deserted until gutted by fire three years later, it‘s charred innards coldly hauled away by Whelan the Wrecker).

St. Moritz became one of the hubs of my rapidly expanding universe in those days. Ice skating was my elective ‘sport’ of choice while I was a student at the Christian Brothers College in East St. Kilda, and every Wednesday after lunch period a group of us would take the chaperoned walk down Dandenong Road and onto Fitzroy Street, my small group of friends and I (school misfits, all) lagging behind so we could share a stolen cigarette and drink in all the lurid sights the area had to offer back then, the drab, dirty greyness and rustic brick of the landscape providing a suitable milieu for the diversity of people who inhabited it - the drunkards whose better days were decades behind them, musicians and new wave hipsters doing their best to look elegantly wasted and fashionably streetwise, the sickly junkies either looking in desperation for their next hit or stumbling around in the midst of it, the prostitutes who took us in with wary eyes as they chain-smoked and looked for trade, and the collection of other unique characters and desperados who wandered aimlessly and seemed to be doing nothing but killing time and waiting anxiously for darkness to fall. At the time, St. Kilda was still looked upon as a dirty and dangerous place, full of intrigue, crime, sleaze, sex and corruption, and Fitzroy Street was seen as the beating heart that pumped out all of this vice to the surrounding areas, a continual parade of buzzing neon, greasy hamburger joints (where it was always rumoured you could order a hit of smack with your Chicko Roll), badly-lit amusement arcades, seamy sex shops, skid row apartments, grotty milk bars, and the odd backroom gambling den.

The highlight of our walk would invariably be the sight of our horrified chaperone frantically waving us past the George Hotel, ordering us to avert our eyes lest they be tainted forever. At the time, the George had attained notoriety as one of the seedier hotels in the St. Kilda area (no mean feat, indeed). Built in between world wars, by the 1960s it had become a respite and watering hole for hookers and local lowlifes, and in 1970 played host to Melbourne’s first drag shows. The entrance to the George, loudly advertising their striptease shows and burlesque dancers - This Is The Show! - was a work of garish art that should be proudly on display in a museum someplace.

As 3:30 rolled around I would start the short walk from St. Moritz to the relatively straight and secure confines of my weatherboard Elwood home. Usually I would stop by the Acland St. McDonalds (formerly the site of a great wax museum), hoping I’d be served by the cute girl with the blonde sharpie hairdo (short and spiky on top, wispy rat tails at the back) and silver lightning bolt earrings, the glittering outline of her homemade AC/DC shirt clearly visible through her uniform. She was probably no more than a year or two older than me, but already seemed light years out of my fumbling league. I’d sit at a table with my fries and shake and watch the parade of shady characters as they wandered in and out of the notorious Esquire Motel, scene of many drug overdoses and even a gangland killing before it was renovated and re-opened as an Easystay, providing a clean and safe environment for guests and maids you can trust, but robbing the place of its ambience and sense of sordid history.

On the days it was open, my nights back then were almost always spent haunting Luna Park. How cool it was to have such an attraction a mere ten minute walk from your front door. Many locals may have taken it for granted, and some no doubt thought the place was behind the times and ready to be bulldozed, but that was one of the reasons why I was drawn to it so strongly and so consistently. Walking the outskirts of that archaic, wooden white frame and entering that creepy, gaping clown’s mouth, it was like stepping back in time, to an era of rattling, death trap rollercoasters, dodgem cars that showered a continual rainbow of electric sparks over your head, a ghost train whose scariest feature was the occasional derelict slumped in the corner cradling a half-empty bottle of cheap red, and huge bundles of wispy, sickly sweet pink fairy floss that had you running around on a sugar high for the next week. It was a slice of Coney Island in my own back yard, and how could you not love the names of those rides and attractions? The Big Dipper, the Rotor, the Whip, the River Caves, the Giggle Palace with its psychotic laughing clown looking down at you from his throne. All that was missing was the row of sideshow tents featuring tattooed women and two-headed fish boys. It was a magical and beautifully gaudy electric wonderland, one whose exterior still looks very much the same today, though the interior will break the heart of anyone who remembers and loves the place for what it once was.

After leaving high school at the end of 1981, I spent the remainder of the decade riding the coattails of all the things that made living in St. Kilda at the time so exhilarating for me. They were simple but grand days: My years behind the counter of St. Kilda Video, on the corner of Acland and Barkly Streets (now the Big Mouth Café), where the customers often provided more drama, humour and horror than any of the movies we rented out. Long drinking and bullshit sessions at the Doultan Bar, when it was still just a dim, smoke-filled little cubicle frequented by the same tiny group of regulars and the odd blow-in. Devouring slices of Tony’s pizza - randomly cut in odd, almost Picasso-esque shapes - while marvelling at the huge collection of postcards from around the world that lined the wall of his Acland St restaurant (Tony would eventually die doing what he loved doing, keeling over at his pizza oven in front of horrified and hungry customers). All night dope-fuelled marathons popping coins into the latest games at the Red Cave Amusement Arcade, just down from the Greyhound Hotel. Dancing with drag queens at Bojangles and spilling out from the cramped confines of the Linden Tree and onto Fitzroy St just in time to see the dawn break. Feeling the visual and aural assault of the Bad Seeds, Screamin’ Jay Hawkins, Wall of Voodoo, the Huxton Creepers and others from the centre of the Venue’s sticky, beer stained floor.

Unfortunately, good times seldom last, and by 1988 the party was already beginning to break up. St. Kilda Video closed its doors, friends moved to outer suburbs to start families, the Village Belle got an upgrade, Chopper Read shot someone dead outside Bojangles, property went through the roof and sent many of the more interesting denizens fleeing in search of cheaper digs, and the café culture started seeping in, which was when I sensed my time was just about up. I still call St. Kilda my home, but its essence has been diluted and all but evaporated for me now. There are a few side streets and the occasional sight and sound that still take me back to those days, but more and more I’m a stranger in a strange land, living in a world populated by people I’m not sure I want to know, and haunted by the ghosts of my past. The St. Kilda of today prospers and thrives with a cosmopolitan elegance that attracts people from all over the world, but for me its true spirit will forever be contained within the dark shadows of its seedy past. It was a world I never fully appreciated while I had it, and it’s a world I’ll forever miss. 

St. Kilda in 1981.

Twenty-nine years ago.

Jesus Fucking Christ.

Copyright 2010 John Harrison 

COLLINS ST. STYLE?

A new pic of me snapped by Galenya K for her website Collins St. Style...



http://collinsstreetstyle.blogspot.com

BACHELOR PAD #12

Another recent article published in Bachelor Pad #12, this one devoted to classic girlie magazines of the 1950s & early-60s.

COLLECTABLES TRADER

Have recently strated writing regular articles on vintage memorabilia for the glossy Australian magazine Collectables Trader, which is avialble from most bigger newsagents. Topics I have covered in articles so far include Planet of the Apes, James Bond, Kiss and - coming up in the new issue - pulp fiction paperbacks.

UPDATE

Haven't posted here for a while, but will be updating more often from now on. Some new reviews have been posted over at DVD Holocaust, including:

Russ Meyer's Finders Keepers,Lovers Weepers/Pandora Peaks
http://dvdholocaust.com/review.php?id=556

42nd Street Pete's Night of Perverted Pleasures
http://dvdholocaust.com/review.php?id=565

ANIMAL KINGDOM

Australia/2010/Directed by David Michod



Written and directed by the little-known David Michod, Animal Kingdom is the latest local film to come along that’s being touted as the saviour of Australian independent cinema. I’m always dubious when a film is hailed as such, but there’s no denying that Animal Kingdom is an engrossing and powerful crime film that puts the sex ’n’ drugs gloss dross of the last two series of Underbelly to shame (and if you go along to this film expecting it be an amped-up Underbelly, you’re bound to come away disappointed).

Set in Melbourne in the late-1980s, Animal Kingdom is loosely (but quite clearly) based on the life of infamous crime matriarch Kath Pettingill, whose clan of children (including sons Dennis Allen, Victor Peirce and Trevor Pettingill) created terror and mayhem as they ran amok across the city, dealing heroin, robbing banks and committing murders seemingly at will, until an incident involving the Armed Robbery Squad and the killing of Victor Peirce’s close friend and crime partner, Peter Jensen, led to the cold-blooded execution of two young police officers in a darkened street in South Yarra in 1988.

Following the overdose death of his mother, teenager Joshua ‘J’ Cody moves in with his grandmother Janine ‘Smurf’ Cody (Jacki Weaver) and is quickly sucked into the full-time crime lifestyle of her three sons - bank robber Pope (Ben Mendelsohn), wired drug dealer Craig (Sullivan Stapelton) and the naïve young Darren (Luke Ford), who has little options in life but to follow in his older brothers’ footsteps. When Pope’s best friend and crime partner, Barry (Joel Edgerton), who is sick of the lifestyle and plans to go straight, is shot dead by the police in cold blood, the Cody boys decide to get revenge by taking down two of the cops’ own. As tensions and paranoia within the family grow following the police killings, a senior homicide investigator (Guy Pearce) zeroes in on Joshua as the potential weak link who’s most likely to cave in and turn witness for the prosecution.

An true ensemble piece, Animal Kingdom is a slow burner, filled with an ominous atmosphere of continual tension, which occasionally erupts into moments of sudden, and often unexpected, bloody violence. The cast is uniformly top notch, from the experienced likes of Weaver (who’s face delivers a superb evil glare), Mendelsohn and Pierce to the relatively unknown Sullivan Stapelton. Even newcomer James Frecheville delivers the goods as the vapid, monosyllabic lost youth Joshua.

For the most part, the film delivers a genuine sense of Melbourne suburbia in the 1980s (I never thought I’d appreciate hearing Air Supply in a movie), although a few time-warp glitches appear throughout (people have tiny mobile phones and huge televisions, and I’m certain I spotted a rack of DVDs in the background during one scene). The film might also disorient any viewers who go in expecting a more accurate re-enactment of the facts, but these are minor quibbles in a film that might hopefully put Australian crime cinema back on the right, gritty character-driven track.

Copyright John Harrison 2010

LITTLE SHOPPE OF HORRORS Nos. 23/24

It’s always a thrill when an issue of Dick Klemensen’s long running Hammer magazine Little Shoppe of Horrors turns up in my letterbox, and the latest two issues are no exception.



Issue 23 covers two of my favourite, somewhat lesser known, Hammer Horrors from the mid 1960s, The Reptile (1965) and The Plague of the Zombies (1966), including interviews with Reptile star Jacqueline Pearce, the late great character actor Michael Ripper, and a rather incendiary interview with the director of both films, John Gilling, who has some very strong and not so flattering things to say about most of the people he worked with at Hammer (and kudos to Klemensen for running the interview as is, in what is mostly a Hammer friendly and positive magazine). Other features in this issue include an interview with Michael Gough (Konga, Hammer’s Phantom of the Opera, Horrors of the Black Museum), Michael Carreras on 10 Seconds to Hell and more.



The current issue of LSOH (24) is devoted to the Mummy movies produced by Hammer (The Mummy, The Curse of the Mummy’s Tomb, The Mummy’s Shroud and Blood from the Mummy’s Tomb), and with its plethora of rare pics and detailed production information, is a must-have for any fans of the series, including an interview with the stunning female star of Terrance Fisher’s sumptuous The Mummy, Yvonne Furneaux.

If you love Hammer Films, or admire vintage British horror cinema in general, you’d be doing yourself a big disservice if you don’t pick up this publication. Apart from all the in-depth interviews and information it contains, the magazine is also beautifully designed, printed on quality glossy paper, profusely illustrated with often rare photos, and features some gorgeous cover and interior art by the likes of Bruce Timm, Mike Schneider and Mark Maddox.

www.littleshoppeofhorrors.com

PORTABLE GRINDHOUSE

PORTABLE GRINDHOUSE:
THE LOST ART OF THE VHS BOX

by Jacques Boyreau

As an admirer and something of a collector (but by no means a completist) of early exploitation/horror/sleaze films on VHS, I keenly picked up this book when I spotted it on the racks at Alternate Worlds (Chapel St, Windsor). Unfortunately, despite it’s great title and novel design (the cover looks like a VHS cassette and comes in a blood-splattered slipcase like an old sell-thru video tape), this colour compendium of vintage 1980s American video box art misses the mark almost as frequently as it hits it. With each video sleeve taking up a double-page spread (reproducing both front and back covers) author/compiler Jacques Boyreau certainly comes up with a few rare, lurid gems (The Legend of the Wolf Woman, The Black Panther, Nightmare Circus, Night of the Strangler, One Armed Executioner) he also throws in a few choices that had me scratching my head as to just what exactly Boyreau’s idea of a ‘grindhouse’ film may be (with the inclusion of baseball, war and hunting documentaries, Saturday morning cartoons, Jerry Lewis comedies and even a Barbie and the Rockers video and a Gary Coleman home safety instructional tape!). The text is minimal and limited to just a few page introduction, making Portable Grindhouse something more for the casual fan who wants something to display next to their shelf of Tarantino DVDs rather than the exhaustive study which the subject deserves.

(Fantagraphics Books/USA/2009/200 Pages)

Review Copyright John Harrison 2010

GRINDHOUSE: SEX, DRUGS & ROCK ‘N’ ROLL

Director: Various
Cast: John Ashley, Andrew Prine, Arch Hall, Jnr., Johnny Carrol
Studio: Umbrella Entertainment
Aspect Ratio: 2:3 Widescreen and 2:3 Full Frame
Region: NTSC All
Running Time: 514 Mins
No. Discs: 4

The latest in Umbrella’s line of ‘Grindhouse’ releases (following on from their Ted V Mikels and Retro Sexploitation sets) is comprised of releases put out by cult film critic/musician/writer/wrestler Johnny Legend on his own Legend House label in the US, and focuses primarily on vintage juvenile delinquency (or JD) cinema from the 1950s and early-60s, with a few oddities thrown in for good measure.

ROCK BABY, ROCK IT (1957/B&W)
Directed by J. G. Tiger

A grimy obscurity filmed in Dallas, Rock Baby, Rock It tells the predictable tale of a teen dance club being shut down and taken over by rock & roll hating gangsters. Filled with clichéd jive dialogue (“Play it cool, Kitten”) and featuring mostly local actors with some very un-Hollywood like faces, this film does have its own strange, low-rent charm, and is filled with some great little-known rock & roll and rockabilly gems from the likes of Johnny Carroll (who also stars), Don Coats & the Bon-Aires, Preacher Smith & the Deacons and The Cell Block Seven.

TEEN MANIA (2007/Colour/B&W)

Compiled by Legend, this 66 minute party tape dishes out some choice clips from such 1950s & 60s teensploitation gems such as Rockabilly Baby, Untamed Youth (with platinum blonde bombshell Mamie Van Doren), I Was a Teenage Frankenstein, Beach Ball, Hot Rods to Hell, Riot on Sunset Strip, The Love-Ins and more.

HIGH SCHOOL CAESAR (1960/B&W)
Directed by O’Dale Ireland

Minor teen idol John Ashley stars as a rich, spoiled bully who rigs the election to become school president and proceeds to intimidate the students and bleed them dry, all the while keeping a dopey accountant and team of leather-jacketed hoods forming a shield around him at all times. It all leads to the usual tragic consequences and eventual comeuppance. A moderately entertaining but fairly staid and unexciting late-period JD film, highlighted by a rollicking theme song belted out by Reggie Perkins (“He’s the gangster in our school…He’s cool, he’s like a freezer…That’s why we call him, High School Caesar”). Ashley went on to appear in beach party movies in the 1960s, then reached an exploitation career high by producing and starring in a string of sleazy Filipino horror films directed by Eddie Romero (including the classic Mad Doctor of Blood Island).

NAKED YOUTH (aka WILD YOUTH, 1960/B&W)
Directed by John Bushelman

A group of overaged delinquents break out of a detention farm and get hooked up with drug smugglers operating out of Mexico (who hide their heroin inside piñatas). Another seedy, low-rent JD wonder from Johnny Legend’s seemingly bottomless vault of cinematic scuzz.

PREHISTORIC WOMEN (1950/Colour)
Directed by Albert J. Cohen

Having nothing to do with rock & roll, this early sexploitation pot-boiler has curvaceous, primitive jungle women driving their menfolk crazy with their frenzied dancing and evil temptations. Told mainly via narration, it’s like an old episode of Wild Kingdom, with big bosoms and long legs. Stars Laurette Luez as the glamazonian Tigri, queen of the prehistoric women.

SPIES A GO GO (aka NASTY RABBIT, 1964/Colour)
Directed by Nicholas Merriwether

A pretty silly rock & roll/spy farce, inspired by the Cold War and the emerging James Bond craze, about a Russian plot to infect America with a deadly bacteria smuggled into the country inside a rabbit. A spy who doubles as a rock & roll singer foils the plot. Worth watching for star Arch Hall Jnr. (who is much better in Wild Guitar and The Sadist), the cool guitar-twanging, and the cinematography by future Hollywood heavyweights Vilmos Zsigmond and Lazlo Kovaks.

BARN OF THE NAKED DEAD (1974/Colour)
Directed by Gerald Cormier

The real odd one out in this set, Barn of the Naked Dead wallows in an atmosphere of grimy backwoods sleaze, as three aspiring, Vegas-bound showgirls are kidnapped by a tight-jeaned young maniac (a creepy and effective Andrew Prine) and held captive (along with other women) in his barn, where they are whipped and forced to perform circus tricks (!). Those who don’t comply get doused in blood and chased down by the madman’s hungry cougar. A ludicrous subplot has the psycho’s radiation-scarred father wandering the desert killing people. Although not reliant on nudity or overt lesbianism, Barn of the Naked Dead is nonetheless an interesting and unique riff on the WIP (Women In Prison) films which enjoyed a brief run of popularity in the early 1970s. The creepy electronic score (by Tommy Vig) is offset by the inclusion of a cheesy lounge-like pop vocal (Evil Eyes performed by Pamela Miller).

Extras included on this set include a number of Johnny Legend ‘surprises’ (clips/trailers/anecdotes, etc), an interview with Andrew Prine and an edition of Legend’s video show Gore Beat, co-hosted by John Landis and covering the films of Fred Olen Ray, Brian Yunza and the late, great Ray Dennis Steckler.

Review Copyright John Harrison 2010

BETTY PAGINATED #31

Hard to believe it's been almost TWENTY years since an issue of Betty Paginated first filtered through my mailbox. A lot has happened in the world (and in my life) during that time, but it's great to see Dann Lennard still with a fire in his belly, spewing out his views on all the tangents of pop culture which pique his interest - specifically, movies, music, wrestling, comics and porn, along with some more personalised reflections on what has been going on in his life since the last issue surfaced a couple of years back (including a collapsed lung and dose of glandular fever that struck him in 2009).

Standout pieces from the latest issue include an in-depth review of Mark Hartley's brilliant Ozploitation documentary Not Quite Hollywood (written by fellow zinester Kami), a (justified) rant against comic books artists stealing other peoples' work (including Nick 'son of Gene' Simmons), interviews with veteran Aussie film stuntman Grant Page (Mad Max, The Man from Hong Kong), and Watchmen artist Dave Gibbons, wild 80s pro-wrestler Chris Colt, and much more within it's 36 pages (not to mention all the freebie comics, zines and other goodies Dann usually throws in).

Check it out!

www.bettypaginated.blogspot.com