In Praise of Fanny Banks and Gordon Bassett

 

Fanny Banks starred in two horror movies, THE SWAMP WITCH (1974) and HARRIET THE HOOK (1976), in which she played the titular characters to great effect.  The films were written and directed by her soon to be husband Gordon Bassett, a regional filmmaker from Metairie, Louisiana.  After living through the real-life horrors of an alcoholic father and a mother who served fruit cake year-round, he found solace in watching horror films.  Following a stint in the coast guard, he returned home to run a traveling spook show throughout the South, Dr. Kaleidoscope's Chamber of Creeps and Kooks.

Dr. Kaleidoscope was the nom de plume of Milton Hunter, who like Bassett, was massive fan of horror in all of its guises.  Initially a flop with audiences, Bassett and Hunter turned things around with new characters and scarier situations.

Then Bassett met Fanny, who was working at a carnival selling funnel cakes.  The two fell in love and Fanny went on the road with the Spook Show.  Fanny played numerous characters: scantily clad vampires, scantily clad slave girls, scantily clad ladies in distress, but her best loved was Isabella the swamp witch, which proved to be so popular that she became the co-host.  But Dr. Kaleidoscope did not want a co-host.  He didn’t feel that a “broad could do horror right.”   Bassett had a good relationship with Dr. K., but his new love was more important.  He sold his half of the show to the good doctor.  Through a variety of twists and turns, too boring to write about, Bassett made his first movie with Fanny starring in THE SWAMP WITCH.

PLOT:  The residence of Breux Ferry, Louisiana have been telling tall tales and spinning wild yarns about a witch who haunts the swamps and local environs.  Every year she has to sacrifice a virgin in order to retain her own youth and beauty. THE SWAMP WITCH has Banks playing one of a group of college students who tread deep into the swamps of Louisiana.  The Swamp Witch inhabits her body and uses her to murder the rest of her crew.   

The couple would travel to theaters where THE SWAMP WITCH was playing and have Fanny make appearances as the Swamp Witch and sign autographed 8x10s for the fans.

The cast also included Chief Swimming Elk, an actual Chitimacha Indian, who took up acting when he saw a performance of The Unsinkable Molly Brown in the mid-sixties.  He attended acting classes, then tried to get work, but most producers thought that he was too Indian to play an Indian.  Undaunted, he peed in their drinks, then returned to Louisiana and got a role in the SWAMP WITCH.  His only other role was as a fast talking, tomahawk throwing used teepee salesman in the short-lived television sit-com FORKED TONGUE (1977).

Chef Dorsey Brown, who plays the college professor, was an actual chef, who was hired to cater a local performance of THE FANTASTICKS.  He caught the acting bug, but soon returned to cooking.

Next up for Bassett and Banks was HARRIET THE HOOK, a titillating, yet sadistically gory telling of a ghost woman who has to kill seven human lovers during orgasm to allow her soul to rest in peace.  It provides chills in an oppressive Louisiana gothic setting.

There was talk about a third collaboration, but this third horror project never made it past the planning stages.  THE CREATURE WITH THE GOLDEN CURLS, which featured a Shirley Temple-like girl who is possessed by a voodoo curse during an island vacation and wreaks havoc amongst her stage mother and other Hollywood types.