Actress Carla Radicchio was a bright shooting star in the exploitation film world, that unfortunately was snuffed out prematurely due to a deadly bout of taste, that made her turn down all future roles that involved any type of violence towards women . . . Even if it was crucial to the plot. Luckily for fans of such plots, Carla Radicchio starred in three low budget classics before her change of heart.
The first was THE WICKED 3 (1974), directed with a modicum of visual style by Sonny Drake, under the pseudonym of Logan Berry. Drake is the same man who directed SUPER STEW under the alias of Pinot Gris.
Sal Mancuso is a petty criminal punk who steps up into the big time when he accidently kills an old man, who catches Sal breaking into his apartment. Sal, who is fingered by a witness, steals a van and hits the road with his girlfriend, Norma (Radicchio), and his little sister, Daisy (Faye Dillard), to escape prosecution. As they make their way out of state, Sal pimps Norma, who isn’t quite “normal”, out to locals along their escape route . . . He does draw the line at doing the same with his little sister . . . Though he is tempted to on a few occasions. It all ends in a hail of bullets and a few hand grenades.
Advertised as “BONNIE AND CLYDE ON OVERDRIVE!”, THE WICKED 3 is one film that is able to not only live up to its’ poster hype but manages to surpass it without looking back through its' warped rearview mirror.
Radicchio plays Norma as a slightly retarded version of Lolita. High on sexuality, low on IQ. Norma will do anything to please Sal without a single thought for her own well-being, no matter how low and debauched the scenarios orchestrated by Sal become: sleeping with a creepy older woman to pay off Sal’s gambling debt, being sold as a sex toy to a group of migrant workers or giving oral sex to a goofy gas station attendant, while Sal and Daisy raid the station for supplies.
Daisy starts off as an innocent, but with Sal and Norma as her mentors, she quickly catches on to their lifestyle of crime and sex.
Faye Dillard, twenty-three at the time of filming, plays the sixteen-year-old virgin (?) well. Her best scene is when Sal catches her making out with a biker. Sal blows his top, beats the biker to within an inch of his life, sets the motorcycle on fire before pushing it over a cliff. Leaving the biker on the side of the road like roadkill. Now, in addition to the police, the trio have a gang of revenge seeking bikers hot on their tails.
A flashback shows Daisy necking with her boyfriend. It is a tender scene, until an enraged Sal catches them, strangling the boy. Screaming at Daisy, “You will always be a virgin!”
For Faye Dillard, this was her first screen appearance. She went on to play a devious hooker in DEAD ‘N GONE (1976), a criminal prosecutor who becomes the rape interest of a vicious deviant in KILLING FOR KICKS (1978) and the head of an adoption agency in the made for Televison movie debacle THE SUPERSLAB WARRIOR AND THE CB KID.
Playing the hotheaded and quick-tempered Sal was Francesco (Fran) Rossi III, who played a slimy toad in KANSAS CITY KINGPIN (1978), a greasy stoolie in BUM STEER (1981) and a wily, fast talking concert promoter in POWER CHORD: THE STORY OF ROTGUT ROMEO (1983).
Fran followed in his father's thespian footsteps. His father, Francesco Rossi IV, was a character actor who mainly worked in westerns and war movies including BADLANDS AMBUSH (1951), INCIDENT AT A BORDER TOWN (1954), THE BRAVE AND THE MIGHTY (1955), WANTED: JOHNNY MONTANA (1956), THE LAST SUBMARINE (1956).
Radicchio then went on to play Angela, a counselor of an all-girls summer camp, that is besieged by a group of volatile perverts who take over the camp after escaping from a prison’s psych ward. WELCOME TO CAMP NOWHERE (1975) caters to the lowest of prurient interests . . . and it is all the better for it. The film manages to keep the viewers interest with chases, sexual assaults, knife, gun and chainsaw violence and bucolic wilderness locations. Well not so much of the latter.
The four escaped loonies are described by an emergency news radio bulletin thusly.
“The leader of the gang is Rocky Hoffman, a megalomaniacal punk, with a deep seeded mother fixation, who is never seen without his sunglasses and a bad attitude. . . Herman “Taco” Torres, a switchblade wielding Mexican with multiple personalities . . . Each more deadly than the next. Sheb Nixon, a hulking 6’7 giant, who raped and murdered a busload of Shriners outside of Pittsburgh some years back, and . . . Silas Firkins; an afro-headed, mute, Caucasian, with an unquenchable sweet tooth and a proclivity for necrophilia."
Radicchio’s role is a complete 180 turn from THE WICKED 3, as her character is mature, moral, clever and protective of the girls in the camp. She is also quite deadly when brandishing embedding a nasty looking billhook into the crotch of one of her tormentors in the bloodiest scene in the movie.
Tyler Wilson plays gang leader Rocky Hoffman with an intensity of a thousand suns.
“Mother! Why did you treat me like that?” “I am your baby boy!”
Wilson was a method actor and spent two weeks in a psych ward studying the patients, trying to get some insight for his character. He also spent a few months prior hanging out with sunglass wearers trying to get a bead on that aspect of his character as well. Wilson’s first acting role was as the perpetually stoned border of the leads in the situation comedy AND GONZO MAKES THREE (1973-1975), he then went on to star in THE MAN WITH THE X-RAY BRAIN (1978) as a college dropout who is able to read people's minds after a close encounter with a glowing meteorite that lands near his campsite.
Edson Salcedo plays Herman “Taco” Torres the “schizoid with a switchblade”, with a quiet rage that is always on the point of exploding. He was in the long running bilingual sitcom, QUE PASA, HONKY?
Playing the towering terror, Sheb Nixon, is Rando Whitley, a giant in stature but a midget in brains. Because of his height Nixon was called on to play numerous beasts and brutes in many low budget monster flicks. Including GINORMOUS! (1981) and BEAST FROM TALL TIMBER (1978).
The final member of the gang is Silas Firkins, played by Nelson Dawkins, who has an unlimited supply of hard candy sweets and an unquenchable thirst for the dead. Dawkins was only in one other movie, playing a victim, in the 1982 slasher film NIGHT OF THE LUNATIC.
Radicchio’s last film role was as one of the QUEENS OF CHAOS (1977) in which she plays, Mayella, one of five orphans/hitchhikers taken in by Reb Sweetwater and his wife Dottie. Dottie is a homemaker and Reb runs the biggest chop shop in the Carolinas. He teaches his girls the art of stealing cars, chopping them down into parts and selling them off in quick fashion. Of course, they have to stay one step ahead of the law and other nefarious characters to keep their lucrative business rolling.
Joining Carla as the other Queens of Chaos are Jocelyn Arugula, Rhonda Bibb, Victoria Cress and Leslie Escarole. Each actress brings a sexy flare to their roles, as well as believability, which is not surprising, as all five leads were alumni of the Actors Market in Venice, Ca., where one not only had to have outstanding acting chops to be accepted, but they also additionally had to have the surname of a foodstuff.
Rhonda Bibb went on to act in many more features and Movies of the Week, including THE HIJACKING OF FUNICULAR 49 (1977), THE STRANGER WHO LIVES IN MY MIND (1978) and ESCAPE FROM HOUDINI (1979).
Victoria Cress and Jocelyn Arugula played sisters in IT HAPPENED IN DELTA COUNTY, USA. (1978). Cress played a maid in THE STRANGE AND RE-OCURRING DEATHS AT FERNSBY MANOR (1977). Arugula played the lead in the short-lived sit-com LIZZY BORDEN GOES TO COLLEGE (1976).
Leslie Escarole played the love interest of an asshole in IT COULDN’T HAPPEN TO A NICER JERK (1982), and a naïve teenager falling in love for the first time in THE CHALLENGES OF YOUNG LOVE (1983).
After a twenty-six-year break from acting, Radicchio returned for a one-off appearance in a made for television movie, playing a small-town matriarch in THE INCREDIBLE 2 HEADED CHRISTMAS MIRACLE, an American Greetings Christmas movie from 2003.
PLOT: Janice is a cold, calculating and successful businesswoman, who returns to her small hometown in Maine after being away for fifteen years in the big city. She meets her high school sweetheart, Chip, who she hasn’t spoken to since she left for college. Chip was a nice, sweet, unassuming type whose personality hasn’t changed in the intervening years. The one thing that has changed is that Chip had another man’s head transplanted onto his body. The other head belongs to, Rollo, who is as rude as Chip is charming. Chip loves the holidays, but Rollo is a classic grinch who has not one iota of holiday cheer. Janice gets reacquainted with Chip and her hometown, re-falling in love with both, and in trying to get Rollo to welcome the Christmas spirit into his heart and soul, Janice learns a lot about herself and her failings in the process.
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