In Praise Of Coming Attractions

If you liked Emanuelle . . .

If you loved Emmanulle. . .

You are going to lust for . . .

Emmmanuelle!!!

PLUS

WEST GERMAN SEXPLOITATION WITH . . .

PLUS

                   AMERICAN BIKER TRASH

AND

TEXAS MOMMA'S BOY GOES ON A RAMPAGE!

 

In Praise Of Transcontinental International Pictures

Transcontinental International Pictures had a long profitable run on movie screens.  During their peak, they even stood toe-to-toe with the mighty American International Pictures as the premier independent American exploitation film company.  There will be plenty of TIP's film catalogue featured in upcoming posts, as they are criminally under covered for the large number of movies that they released.

Southern fried exploitation was always a hot ticket.  TIP's first foray into the genre was THE BOOTLEGGER'S BROOD (1970)

PLOT:  The old bootlegger (Raymond Mitchell) is badly injured when his still explodes (set up by a competitor).  Being bed-ridden he has to turn to his three granddaughters to step up and take over the family bootlegging operation until he can get back on his feet.  The granddaughters soon realize that most of their time involves fighting and outwitting other bootleggers muscling in on their territory and lawmen who want to shut them down.  

Lighthearted, good-natured, down-home fun, full of the prerequisite car chases, skinny dipping and low brow comedy that are comfort foods for the genre.  Even the violence is played for laughs.  Great scene where a none- too- bright horny deputy catches one of the girls running shine red handed and in exchange of him arresting her, he tries to get sexual favors from her, but she is able to turn the tables on him and leave him naked and handcuffed to his patrol car. 

Plenty of explosions and well filmed car chases around the hilly backroads in and around Charlotte and Ashville, North Carolina.

The three main actresses were all former beauty contest winners.  Georgette McDonald was Miss Tennessee 1970, Lilly Noble was Miss Georgia 1972 and Annabel Stevens was Miss Compost Cutie 1973.

Lilly Noble was the only one of the three female leads to continue an acting career.  She went on to play a dual role as long lost twins.  One a small-town girl. The other a high-class call girl, who switch places for a night in 1976's MY SISTER'S DIRTY DIARY.  She played a small role as "Inebriated Exhibitionist #6" in 1977's FOOT LOOSE AND FANCY FREE.

The special co-star, Raymond Mitchell, playing the part of the Bootlegger, once had an esteemed acting career, but years of drink and hefty alimony payments for four bum marriages left him in dire straits both in health and financially.  By the mid-sixties the only parts that Mitchell could get were in low budget exploitation films.  Hollywood had no need for his services anymore.

Excerpt from Raymond Mitchell's autobiography "The Drunk Stays in the Picture":

I had just come off a three-day bender, that had followed a weeklong bender, and I was making plans for a Thanksgiving bender, when my agent, Marty Royce, gave me a call.  He was ecstatic.  "Raymond", he said, "$5,000! Three days! North Carolina!"  $5,000?  I would kill my mother for $5,000, Hell, at that point in my career I would have killed anyone's mother for $5,000 and I would have thrown in the family dog for free.  I told Marty to accept and to come over with the contract, the script, a bottle of bourbon and a bucket of fried chicken.

My last marriage had just ended, adding to the two alimony payments that were already crippling me financially.  I should have known better than to take the plunge for the fourth time with my track record.  Susan and I had nothing in common.  I was sixty-three years old at the time.  Susan was twenty-five.  I was a washed-up actor.  She was a free spirit who believed that work was a four-letter word, which it is. So, she was correct on that one.  Our marriage only lasted three months.  Looking back, I should have known that we would have a rocky path.  Our first heated argument came during the preparations for the wedding.  I wanted white rice to be thrown and Susan wanted brown rice.  Neither of us would budge from our stance.  We ended up having our guests throw mashed potatoes at us.  It was all downhill from there.

Raymond Mitchell passed away in 1976 from cirrhosis of the earlobe. 

Director Dixon Mason made a lot of white trash, car crash movies, THE GREAT EL PASO TO YUMA CONVOY (1977), TRUCKER'S DELIGHT Aka. 18 WHEEL FEVER! (1978) and THE SMOKEY, THE SCOFFLAW AND THE SWINDLER (1979) 

Sibling Producers Rafe and Rory Calhern came from a long line of Carolina moonshine runners and provided screenwriters Moe Young and Rand Niven stories about their family's escapades in the bootlegging business for the script.  Rafe and Rory produced a horror movie called THE CREATURE OF THE GREAT CRAGGY MOUNTAINS (1977) and HAMMERDOWN! THE INCREDIBLE STORY OF TOAD DICKERSON (1978).  Which is a lost film as of this writing.

An interesting side note: 

Actor Gary Perkins who played the small part of "peeping tom in overalls", went on to be the leader of a doomsday cult who had garnered some national press in the 1980's.  The Society for Preservation of End of the World Prophesiers, Rapture Oracles, and Football Prognosticators was founded by Perkins and a parts unknown type who mysteriously went under the name of The Visionary.  The group built up a small but determined following, and on four different occasions pinpointed a date that the world would end.  March 6, 1982, August 9, 1984, October 11th, 1987, and November 16, 1989 (originally forecasted for November 10th, 1989, but was altered so The Visionary could celebrate his birthday on November 14th, 1989, in Cancún). 

The soundtrack was mainly needle drops except for three original songs written by country and western artist Buck Monroe:  "Daffodils and Gunpowder", "Dancing on Dirt Roads" and "The Bootleggers Brood theme".

Monroe, who was a highly sought after session man and amphetamine dealer in Nashville, would go on to play live with Johnny Cash, Johnny Paycheck and Johnny Whitaker.

In an effort to drum up more press for THE BOOTLEGGER'S BROOD, TIP's head of publicity, Klark Kincaid, called in a favor with an old drinking buddy, who was working for Art Instruction Schools and soon one of the characters from the movie, Breezy, was being seen and advertised in comic books and on matchbook covers.  Breezy would fast become the most drawn character by applicants, surpassing Tippy the Turtle by 100 to 1.  Breezy's time at the top ended when parents found their children drawings and after raising a stink, Breezy was gone.

In Praise of J&B

J&B whiskey was the major prop drink in seventies Italian exploitation.  It was as ubiquitous as red herrings in a Giallo, or cobwebbed hallways in a gothic horror film.  If scriptwriters could have concocted a suitable explanation for its presence in a Sword and Sandal film, producers would have placed a bottle or two amongst the wine and grapes.  It was a status symbol of the wealthy, the decadent and the thirsty.  So, it only seemed inevitable that J&B would produce its own movie, THE J&B CONNECTION (1976).

PLOT:  Black marketers have been intercepting and stealing major shipments of J&B Scotch whiskey being imported into Italy.  The scarcity of their favorite scotch whiskey product has turned Italian citizenry on a knife edge, with looting, hoarding and violent confrontations flaring up amongst the deprived consumers.  The J&B companies' Italian president is fighting mad, and forms teams of heavily armed escorts to make sure that the shipments reach the populace.  These “Specialty Protection Squads” are run by ex-police and some of these turn out not to have J&B’s best interest at heart.

The J&B CONNECTION has some tense shoot outs on land and sea and crates full of J&B bottles getting shot up and shattering in slow motion.

Roderico Flocca, who plays, Luca, the head of the Special Protection Squads, was a mainstay in Italian exploitation, debuting as one of the sons of Hercules in 1961's THE 3 SONS OF HERCULES.  He did not return in the sequel, 1962's THE RETURN OF THE 2 SONS OF HERCULES, but continued on in the genre with GOLIATH AGAINST THE BEHEMOTH (1963) and ATLAS IN THE VALLEY OF THE VAMPIRES (1964).  He hit his stride as an actor when he made ten spaghetti westerns including THE RENEGADE GANG (1965), A GUNFIGHTER FOR ALL SEASONS (1966) and a dual role in the surrealistic DJANGO VS DJANGO (1968).  Then when the western well dried up he segued into hard boiled crime films like the rest of Italian film industry.  With HUNTED COP (1973), UN UOMO GIUSTO CONTRO IL SINDACATO Aka. ONE JUST MAN AGAINST THE SYNDICATE (1974) and LA CITTÀ È SOTTO ASSEDIO E LA POLIZIA È IMPOTENTE Aka. THE CITY IS UNDER SEIGE AND THE POLICE ARE HELPLESS (1977) being some of his more memorable outings.

Pacifico Atlantica, who plays the lead hijacker, has the best line in the movie, “He who controls the J&B . . . Controls Italy!”, lent his craggily looks and barrel-chested frame to many genre films including INVESTIGATION OF AN HONORABLE FAMILY (1973), UNDERCOVER IN THE MAFIA, UNDERCOVER IN THE POLICE (1976), the off-the-wall genre mash up HERCULES CONTRA FRANKENSTEIN (1972).

Director Oreste Marchesi who began his career as a camera man on Peplums, including THE MANY GREAT CHALLENGES OF MACISTE (1962) Aka. THE 7 CHALLENGES OF THE SON OF HERCULES, (Title for US Television) and THE LEGEND OF THE SHE-SEA CREATURE, would find his niche directing Euro crime with DIE FIRST, SHOOT LATER (1975) in which a detective fakes his death to take down a crime ring.  THE COP IN A TURTLENECK SWEATER (1977), LA POLIZIA VIENE LASCIATA IMPOTENTE PER MANO DI UN PAZZO Aka. THE POLICE ARE LEFT HELPLESS AT THE HANDS OF A MADMAN (1978) IL CRIMINE PAGA FINO A QUANDO L'ISPETTORE BENINI NON PRENDE IN CARICO IL CASO Aka. CRIME DOES PAY UNTIL INSPECTOR BENINI TAKES OVER THE CASE (1978)

In Praise of Lone Star Film Works

Based out of Lubbock, Texas, Lone Star Film Works was an independent film distributor, which made bank releasing multiple documentaries throughout the seventies.  These included OVERLORDS OF LOCH NESS (1975), UFOs OVER OAK ISLAND (1976), NOSTRADAMUS V CRISWELL: THE FINAL BATTLE (1977), UNEXPLANABLE MYSTERYS OF THE UNKNOWN (1977), ENCOUNTERS FROM BEYOND THE TIME BARRIER (1978) and the most notorious, BIGFOOT AND ME (1979).

which was an account of women who have claimed to have been abducted by and had relations with the big guy.  One lady in particular, Tammy Sue Peterson, claimed to have spent three years with a family of Big Foots in the Pacific Northwest.  Peterson professed to have been able to teach the creatures how to drive a car (a stick shift no less) and together, they robbed numerous banks across Oregon and Washington.  When asked why no one recognized a big foot robbing a bank, Peterson tells the interviewer that they all wore masks to conceal their identity.  Ridiculous stuff to be sure, but a fun view none the less. 

Three years earlier Lone Star had released BRUCE LEE AND THE UFO CONSPIRACY (1976).

In the running for the oddest Bruceploitation movie, which is saying a hell of a lot, is BRUCE LEE AND THE UFO CONSPIRACY (1976), the host, Herbert M. Brinkman, an ufologist and Yellow Belt, whose main theory is that Bruce Lee descended from aliens and that the aliens were responsible for his talent, rise to worldwide fame and eventually his premature death.  Brinkman contends that aliens have infiltrated the movie business across the globe and have attained high level positions in the movie industry.  He also states that the alien life forms control various media outlets, in particular a country and western AM radio station in Topeka, Kansas and that extraterrestrials invented soap on a rope.

More on Lone Star Film Works will appear soon.

In Praise of Pimlico Pictures

The founder and president of Pimlico Pictures was Louis Irwin.  Irwin could never be seen without a cigar in his mouth and a racing form in his hand.  He loved to gamble on horses, hence naming his company after his favorite racecourse.  Pimlico's first release turned out to be a big hit.  The nineteen sixty-two nudist colony film, NATURRIFIC. 

NATURRIFIC wasn't the first nudist colony film by a long stretch, but it did feature many firsts for the genre.  Dodgeball, pin the tail on the nudnick and metallurgy.  Filmed at, of all places, the Lake Fannie Sun Worshiper's Club in Winter Haven, Florida.

When filming was completed and the movie was edited, it was discovered that the running time was under sixty minutes.  Director Doleman Banks, suggested to use footage from a short film that he had made a few years prior.  So, in desperation Pimlico Pictures inserted twelve-minutes of footage from an industrial film that he shot at a foundry. 

LOUIS IRWIN:  No one ever said anything about the foundry scene, ever.  No complaints.  No questions.  Nothing.  Looking at some of the broads that were in the film, the foundry scene was a welcome relief.   

Irwin would have some health issues that kept him away from the track and from producing a second film to immediately capitalize on the success of NATURRIFIC, until four years later, when he was able to pick up a completed movie that was having trouble getting play dates.

North Carolinian, Roger Courtenay, directed one movie in his life, and it was a doozy.  Actually, not just your run-of-the-mill doozy, but a super-duper doozy!  1966's THE BALLERINA AND THE GEEK is that super-duper doozy.   Basically, a Nudie-cutie with slight traces of a Roughie.

PLOT:  Judy is a, some-what chunky, Bouffant'd ballerina traveling cross country to join the Hoboken Ballet Company.  Her car breaks down in the middle of nowhere, so Judy has to Pas de chat to the nearest town for help.  Unfortunately, the nearest town turns out to be inhabited by leering gas station attendants, creepy old farmers, jealous women and smart-ass, rock throwing children. . .  Not to mention a love starved geek who resides in a nearby cave.  It's love at first sight for the shoeless, tattered overall clad geek.  Their budding relationship starts off on a rocky note when the geek kidnaps Judy and takes her back to his cave.  He then naively molests her legs and feet.  At first the Judy is afraid, but after some quality time in each other's company, Judy brings the geek with her to New Jersey as her new dance partner.  The film ends with a spinning newspaper that stops on the headline; "New York City Ballet to debut GEEK LAKE". 

Roger Courtenay was a middle-aged television news director from Ashville, NC., who invested eleven thousand dollars of his parent's retirement fund into the production of THE BALLERINA AND THE GEEK.  Filmed MOS- Mit Out Sense- on 16-millimeter Eastmancolor stock, the film doesn't wear out its welcome, being only an hour in length.  Thankfully there is plenty of geek on display and very little ballet.  THE BALLERINA AND THE GEEK had a small amount of play dates exclusively in drive-in theaters in Southern states, until being picked up by Pimlico, who were able to book dates across the rest of the country.

Next up, Pimlico released their first nudie roughie, a grimy shot in Philadelphia sleaze feast called THE OGLER! (1967).

The OGLER! in question, is a dumpy, middle-aged man spends his days drooling and fantasizing over nudie magazines in his dingy basement apartment, the Ogler then prowls the streets into the wee hours,

peeking through the windows of young ladies, all of whom choose to undress from within the frames.  The film takes a nasty turn when he starts to stalk a nude model that he recognizes from one of the magazines, breaking into her apartment.

The OGLER! is basically a silent feature, except for hearing the Ogler's thoughts.

"I don't think what I do is wrong.  Who does it hurt for me to just look at a dame?  They have no idea that I'm peeking in on them."

In some cities THE OGLER! had a brief release under the title MR. PEEPERS.

Pimlico then released RING-A-DING RELATIONS also in 1967.  A comedy that follows the love life of a ditzy phone operator.

PLOT: Janet Newsom is an attractive, but lonely telephone operator, who eavesdrops on conversations of a sexual nature.  This, of course, gets her hot to the point that she shows up at a masked swinger party in the suburbs with the intentions of letting the stifled exhibitionist trapped inside her for so long run free.  Filled with enough torpedo bras to sink a battleship and plenty of hairy backed men in black socks, RING-A-DING RELATIONS is a comical, some-what titillating time waster.

Like so many low budget exploiters, Pimlico then jumped on thriving hippie movement with a double feature of COUNTERCULTURE CREATURE COMFORTS (1968) and THE HIPPIE DIPPIE WANTON (1969).  These films add drug use to the sexual proceedings.

COUNTERCULTURE CREATURE COMFORTS, a pseudo-documentary that explores the lives and relationships of the typical hippie.  We go to a love-in, visit a commune in Big Sur, watch a body painting contest and attend an Acid rock music festival.

HIPPIE DIPPIE WANTON follows the “Free Love” exploits of a busty flower child in San Francisco. 

Around this time Irwin became a partner in a chain of profitable drive-in theaters in the mid-west, playing a lot of in-house Pimlico releases.  These movies were cranked out like sausage-all were produced on budgets lower than a low, just to have product for the theaters.  The budgets were all $10,000.  All were filmed over one weekend and every film had a running time of less than seventy minutes.

LOUIS IRWIN:  These films were made dirt cheap, so we could quickly have a return on our investment.  We did make sure that each film had something that would make it look like it had a better budget than it did.  For instance, we hired an actually crop duster and went up in his plane to film a scene and get some aerial photography.  In RED WILD AND BLUE, we stole some shots at a rodeo, and we sprung for the use of a tank in another.  We dubbed these movies the “Nasty Nine” . . . Then we filmed three more and dubbed them the “Dirty Dozen".

1. THE CROP DUSTERS WIFE - Involved the sexual escapades of a young, sex starved wife of a geriatric crop duster, who turns to other men when she does not get the proper “dusting” from her old man.

2. SWEET SALLY AND DIRTY GEORGIA - Followed two girlfriends on a weekend road trip of        sexual frivolity.

3. WEEKEND RAPIST - Showed a quiet 9-5 male worker, who rapes women for kicks on his              weekends.

4. RED, WILD AND BLUE - Plot unknown.

5. SWEET SCENT OF A DEGENERATE - Has a man buying a cologne from a flea market, every time he uses it, he turns him into a debauched lecher.

6. WILD, WILLING WANTON - Showed the out-of-control sex life of a young lady who beds          anything that breathes.

7.  THE NAME OF THE GAME IS SEX - various sex encounters among couples who swap.

8. DR. LUST AND THE LESBOS - A mad doctor invents love robots for lonely men, but the robots prefer the female form.

9. QUEEN OF ANOMALIES - Involves a woman who craves everything but “normal” sex.

10. ONCE UPON A WANTON - A young woman bites off more than she can chew.

11.  SOME LIKE IT SIZZLING - Another swinger plot.

12. MS. KNOW-IT-ALL - A woman strongly believes in Women’s Lib, until a pair of perverted dock workers get a hold of her.

The films would be moved from theater to theater in various combinations.

Every movie had a simple white on black credit title card, which flashed on screen both before and after the movie.

This was the only credit.  Regrettably, none of the “Dirty Dozen” series of films exist today.

Louis Irwin left the movie producing business at this time but kept his drive-ins theaters into the eighties when he sold them off one by one.  Louis Irwin passed away in 2008.

 

In Praise of Introductions

Welcome to another blog about exploitation cinema. . .  If you are still with us at this point, I'd like to give you the lowdown on IN PRAISE OF EXPLOITATION.  First off, a promise, IPOE is not here to feature the same old flicks that have been covered ad nauseam.  The vast majority of the movies that will be featured have never had any analysis or even a mention by any other blogs, fanzines, podcasts, documentaries or suicide notes.  IPOE was conceived to introduce fans of genre films to the undiscovered gems and even the unearthed turds from the wide, wild world of cult cinema: Horror, Sword-and-Sandal, Spaghetti Western, Disaster, Giallo, Women in Prison, Kung Fu, Sexploitation, Outlaw Biker, Blaxploitation, Mondo Films, Nazisploitation and even some porn. . .  Actually, a lot of porn.  

In addition to featuring scintillating plot synopsis, garish movie posters and other advertising ballyhoo.  IPOE will also feature biographies on, and interviews with, the talented filmmakers and thespians, who worked in front of and behind the camera to create these movies (Be on the lookout for a particularly scandalous interview with a Craft service worker in the near future) . . .  An inordinately, unhealthy amount of porn.  

IPOE has assembled contributors from all over the globe.  All of which are experts in their chosen and forced at gun point fields.  

Our staff includes the top plot synopsis man in the business, a graduate of the Barbizon School of Synopsis and three-time winner of the Sheldon J. Thalberg Tin Acorn Award for greatness in the art of film plot condensation.

We are also proud to have the preeminent historian of Filipino "Robot Boy" movies.

The latest addition to our team specializes in chronicling the history of "Demented Dwarf" films.  He himself is 6'5- with not an unhinged bone in his ample frame. 

Finally, a word of warning. . . The majority of the films that will be featured in IPOE do contain references of extreme violence and lurid sexual situations that some may find offensive.  If you are one such person, we advise you to leave the blog at once and do not tread further.

And Awa a ay We Go!