In Praise of Pop Art Horror

 

The success of Andy Warhols foray into presenting horror films with ANDY WARHOL'S DRACULA and ANDY WARHOL'S FRANKENSTEIN (Both 1974), led other pop artists to jump onto the horror movie bandwagon.  

The first to be exhibited was LEROY NEIMAN'S WEREWOLF (1975). 

Filmed in Italy, but directed by Fred Weaver, an American film maker who had previously made THE HANDY DANDY FIX-IT MAN (1973) aka THE TOOLBOX LOVER (1979 re-release title).  A sex-comedy with little sex and even less comedy.

PLOT:  A sex-crazed maintenance man at a Hollywood hotel, full of budding movie starlets and Tinseltown weirdos, bumbles his way from one near-miss sexual encounter to another.

Basically, America's quick answer to the popular British "Confessions" series of sex comedies.  So quick, in fact, that HANDY-DANDY hit theaters a year prior to the first installment in that series, CONFESSIONS OF A WINDOW CLEANER (1974).  

Buddy Dill (in his only film role) plays Ned, with a performance that one newspaper critic described as "bringing a winning combination of naivete and retardedness" and also throwing around accolades like "incendiary"- right before he was fired from his job.

Fred Weaver brought a small crew over with him to Italy, a DP, a lighting director and a script and continuity girl, all who had worked with him on HANDY DANDY.  He also brought a workmanlike intensity to the set.  LEROY NEIMAN'S WEREWOLF features a handful of bloody killings and some welcome gratuitous nudity, for those of us who welcome gratuitous nudity.

Some controversy has revolved around the production of the film for some time. The Italian prints of the film credit Lea Oltra as the script girl, but on all other prints Julie King is credited.  Julie King was the script girl that Fred Weaver insisted come over with him to Italy, as he felt her work to be stellar, she was fluent in Italian, and he was banging her on the side.

To throw further confusion into this mix, in the Japanese print, the script girl is credited as "Gezora".

For various reason, this seems to be improbable and highly ridiculous.

Julie King sat down for a career spanning interview for the Fall 1983 issue of Scene Keeper Magazine.

SKM:  This brings us your time in Italy working on Leroy Neiman's Werewolf.

JULIE KING: I was part of the director's crew.  We all had met in college and Freddy brought a few of us over to work with him.  It was a major help that I knew Italian and was good go between him and the Italian actors and crew. 

SKM:  Was the script in Italian?

JULIE KING:  It was written by an Italian, Enzo Bonetti, then translated, very badly to English.  Freddy had me do a second translation from the original script.

SKM:  Did you meet Neiman?

JULIE KING:  Not until the premier.  Other than painting the poster and lending his name and celebrity, I don't think that he had much else to do with it.

SKM:  Tell us about the Lea Oltra controversy.

JULIE KING:  One other person that didn't have much to do with the movie.  Lea Oltra is a real person, but she definitely was no the script girl on Neiman's Werewolf.  Lea was a nice, older Italian woman who helped out on the set, basically as a production assistant.

SKM:  Yet she is listed on the Italian prints as the script girl.

JULIE KING:  From what I understand, that was done for tax purposes.  They were only allowed so many foreigners working on the crew.  Movie fans make a bigger deal of it than I ever did.

Next up was PETER MAX'S BICENTENIAL STRANGLER (1976) aka YANKEE DOODLE RIPPER aka SLASHER OF '76 (1982 re-release title).

In this proto slasher, a blade killer is terrorizing Manhattan's party people during America's Bicentennial celebrations.  Always staying more than one step ahead of the law, in particular a grizzled detective, who is one week away from his retirement.

Last but not least in this short-lived genre was Hariton Pushwagner's MURDER ME GENTLY (1977).

MURDER ME GENTLY is a bleak dystopian noir filmed in West Berlin, that plays out like an Edgar Wallace thriller.  

Directed by Wolfgang Frickhoffer, who had also directed DAS KABARETT DER EROTISCHEN ZWISCHENSPIELE aka THE EROTIC CABARET (1972) and a sequel, GEHEIMNISSE AUS DEM EROTISCHEN KABARETT aka SECRETS FROM THE EROTIC CABARET (1973)

None of these made anywhere near the splash that the two Warhol horror films did, and just like that, the Pop Art Horror genre was gone.