Gruesome Grindhouse Double Feature: Make Them Die Slowly and Savage Man, Savage Beast

It was a hot September day in NYC. Walking down the “Deuce” with my buddy, Richie, we were looking to kill some time. As we approached The Liberty, we just froze in our tracks. A really sick poster was advertising the fact that someone had raped & killed someone’s sister and now it was his turn to Make Them Die Slowly. The poster featured a bloody woman and people holding bloody machetes. It looked like a rape/revenge flick, but it was anything but that.

The Liberty had a monitor out front and they usually ran trailers for the films showing. The monitor was turned off, making this viewing a little more ominous than usual. I wanted to check it out, but Richie was freaked out by it. He was more interested in hitting a massage parlor than checking out this blood bath. I didn’t give a shit, I wanted to see this show. So off he went in search of a blow job and I went to the movies

Both films were released on that hot day in 1981. First up was Savage Man, Savage Beast which was shot in 1975 to cash in on the “Mondo” craze. Picture Faces of Death lite, that’s what this film was. Some parts were as exciting as a travelogue, others were just fuckin' weird & stupid. Lots of cruelty to animals, enough to make you want to walk out. There is footage of someone stupid enough to get out of his car in a safari park and get eaten by lions.

One segment has natives digging holes in the ground and fucking the earth. I swear to God this is true. This one scene, racist in nature, elicited a lot of catcalls & obscenities from the mostly black audience. The film did suck, but nothing could have prepared the crowd for Make Them Die Slowly.

A disclaimer rolled across the screen, narrated by a soft female voice telling us that this film depicts over 32 acts of barbaric torture and cruelty. We are advised that if this kind of material offended anyone, they should leave. Needless to say, no one left, just proving what a bunch of sic fucks we were and still are. It also told us that this film was banned in 30 countries. I’d like to see that list.

This film was directed by Umberto Lenzi, who single handedly created the Italian Cannibal Subgenre with Deep River Savages. Lenzi seemed to be in a pissing contest with another director, Ruggerio Deodato, who made Last Cannibal World( aka Last Survivor, Jungle Holocaust, Carnivorous, & Cannibal). Deodato’s Cannibal Holocaust blew away Lenzi’s two films. This film was his payback. But where Holocaust was grin & unrelenting, this film was just too over the top to work as effectively as Holocaust did.

It starts out, as most Italian cannibal films do, in Manhattan. A junkie is gunned down by two mob guys, looking for a dealer named Mike. Robert Kerman plays a detective in a scene shot near the West Village. Then we shift to the Amazon where three students are out to prove that cannibalism is a myth. They encounter some nasty stuff before they meet up with Mike & Joe, on the run from some locals.

Supposedly the two were looking for emerals and pissed off the locals. Joe, who is dying from a fever or something, lets it slip that Mike tortured a local to get some coke. Mike is the dealer the mob is looking for. Mike (played to the hilt by John Morghen) was a character that was all too familiar to the audience: a dangerous, out of his mind, cokehead. Mike tied the guy to a pole and cut out an eye with a knife, then castrated him. Mike and Pat, (Zora Kerova) snort coke, then try to make it with a native girl. Mike kills her and the tribe wants revenge.

Mike’s buddy dies of a fever and is gutted and eaten. Mike, Rudy, Pat & Gloria are put in a cage. Mike escapes and has a hand chopped off. Rudy gets a poison dart in the neck after he hides in water infested with Piranhas. Mike is tied to a pole and is castrated, and yes, the camera doesn’t shy away. Then he is placed under a table with a hole cit in it. Part of his head sticks out and that is lopped off with a machete & the tribe eats his brains. Pat is hung up with hooks through her tits, in the most appallingly famous shot from the film. Gloria escapes with the help of a friendly native, who gets impaled by a spring trap. She goes back to school and publishes her paper which says cannibalism is a myth.

Make Them Die Slowly was hyped as the most violent film ever made. It was ultraviolent and unrelenting. Where Deodato’s films could pummel the most jaded audiences into stunned silence, this one didn’t. Oh, it did elicit groans of disgust from the crowd, but it did lack the punch of the other cannibal films. Make Them Die Slowly was maybe the most prophetic title ever slapped on a “deuce” marquee. In 1981, the area was in it’s death throes due to crack, the AIDS epidemic, and greedy realtors.

John Morghen, arguably the most abused man in Italian gore films, was completely out of his mind here. The audience was all to familiar with the character he played. Psychotic pipeheads roamed the “deuce” like zombies, looking to pull a ripoff for their next rock. Morghen’s leering ,foulmouthed, sweaty performance was typical of coke fiends in the area. And, that , boys & girls, is what put one of the final nails in the “deuce’s “ coffin.

Make Then Die Slowly was a perennial favorite at The liberty, popping up from time to time until it closed. Cropped versions showed up in some of the inner city theaters in Jersey. The biggest cropping occurred in Mike’s castration scene.

Make Them Die Slowly may be one of the last great exploitation films to play the grindhouse circuit. It is now on DVD, under it’s original title, Cannibal Ferox. Pass the barbecue sauce, will ya.
42nd Street Pete

Spaghetti Western Double Feature: Payment in Blood and Navajo Joe

Westerns were a grindhouse staple, but most of the American made westerns of the 60’s were pretty tame until 1969’s Wild Bunch changed all that. Spaghetti westerns were a lot more violent than our stuff, so they were a no brainer for grindhouse and drive in bookings.

These two I caught at The Embassy Theater in Orange NJ. I was cutting class, probably for the 3rd time that week. I caught the afternoon matinee for these two. Payment in Blood 1966 aka Seven Winchesters for a Massacre starred Ed Byrnes and Guy Madison. It was directed by Enzo Castellari.

Madison is a former Confederate officer who is still fighting the war. He leads raids on small towns, wiping everybody in them out. He has seven members of his gang who kill in various ways, knife, bullwhip, spurs , fists ect. Sort of an evil version of the Magnificent Seven. Each killer has a wanted poster of them pop up during the credits.

Byrnes is a government agent sent to infiltrate the group. Seem that they have a stolen chest of government gold stashed somewhere. The group finds a woman who catches Madison’s fancy. She too is an agent, working with Byrnes. This is a really violent film. People are gunned down in the streets, the camera is on Madison’s screaming face as he yells “ kill them all’. Eventually the “good guys” win out. Byrnes did Any Gun Can Play and a couple of others before appearing on Married with Children and then vanishing into obscurity.

The audience was up for the first film, but crapped all over Navajo Joe.

Navajo Joe 1967 Starring Burt Reynolds, Aldo Sambrell, and Fernando Rey. Directed by Sergio Corbucci.

Reynolds and Clint Eastwood were close friends. Eastwood showed Reynolds A Fistful of Dollars. Reynolds was blown away and wanted to work with Sergio Leone. He got Sergio Corbucci instead. Reynolds wears a fight wig , making him look like the kid from Frankenstein Conquers the World.

The film opens up with Duncan( Aldo Sambrell) and his gang massacring an Indian village to get some scalps to sell. Duncan , when trying to sell the scalps, finds out that he and his gang are now wanted for murder. He kills the sheriff, then forms an alliance to steal a train load of money with a crooked doctor. Burt shows up from time to time to knife a few of Duncan’s gang.

Bury foils the heist. The gang wipes everyone out on the train. A mother is gunned down in front of her baby. Anyone familiar with Corbucci knows that he has a tendency to take it a little further than other directors. Being that the film was backed by Dino De Laurentis, Corbucci was kept on a short leash. Burt hides the money, but is forced to give himself to Duncan’s gang when Duncan threatens an Indian girl.

Burt takes the required beating that all Corbucci’s heroes seem to get in his films. Burt’s friends free him and he goes on a killing spree. He wipes out Duncan’s gang, then has a brutal showdown with Duncan at an old Indian burial ground. Duncan is beaten half to death. He shoots Burt four times before taking an axe to the head.

This was Burt’s first and only Spaghetti western. He did stuff like 100 Rifles and the Man who loved Cat Dancing, but they were more mainstream. This film is more Aldo Sambrell’s than anyone elses. His portrayal of Duncan is brutal and he’s the one to watch in this. Sombrell was a fixture in Spaghetti westerns going back to For a Few Dollars More. In a recent interview he also agreed that this was his best performance.

If it seems like Burt is doing a cameo appearance , it might be due to the fact that Burt had to go back to do a TV series and a lot of his scenes were shot first, then inserted later. Burt , himself wasn’t too fond of this film. Neither was the audience that day as Burt’s appearance in the film was ridiculed mercilessly.
42nd Street Pete

Euro Trash Grindhouse Double Feature: Grand Slam and Dog Eat Dog

A Grindhouse staple from the mid 60’s to the late 70’s was a steady stream of low budget European imports. Films from Italy, West Germany, Spain and England were picked up cheap by distributors. Some were used to pad out a double bill. Others were “angelosized” and released on their own.

You had crappy James Bond rippoffs, West German Edger and Bryan Wallace films, War films , and crime dramas. Of special interest would be films with “washed up” American stars who still had some box office clout. Back in those days, a color film would be the headliner and a black & white film would be the co feature. Some really sucked, some were really good. These two films are actually quite good.

Grand Slam 1967 starring Janet Leigh, Edward G Robinson, Klaus Kinski, and Adolfo Celi. Directed by Guiliano Montaldo.

This is an elaborate heist caper in the mode of The Score and Ocean’s Eleven. A school teacher (Robinson) comes up with a plan to ripoff ten million dollars in diamonds from a vault in Rio De Janeiro during the Carnival, His criminal mastermind friend( Celi), backs the plan. They recruit a team of international criminals to pull off the heist.

Each has a specialty that is need to pull off the heist. There are some nail biting moments here. All of the robbers wind up dead. The diamonds are stolen, and the twist ending comes out of nowhere. This was a pretty “cerebal” film for a grindhouse, and the audience was pretty sedate for it. My question would be how did old timer Robinson and the flamboyant Kinski get along?

Dog Eat Dog 1966 starring Jayne Mansfeild, Cameron Mitchell, Ivor Salter and Werner Peters Directed by Ray Nazarro, Richard Cuna & Gustav Gavin. It took three people to direct a fuckin’ movie?

Well a semi naked Jayne Mansfield rolling around on a money covered bed was enough to rouse the more sedate members of the audience. This was a West German production , so it’s dubbed. Mitchell and Salter rip off a cool million from the US treasury. Salter turns on Mitchell, pushing him off a cliff.

Salter and his girl Jayne, who keeps saying “crackers” though out the film , decide to take off with the loot. Mitchell returns with blood on his face and jacket, he spends the remainder of the film not washing his face and wearing the bloody jacket. Cam is pissed, but he, Salter and Jayne grab the loot and head for a deserted island.

The island isn’t deserted. A lady has come home here to die and is assisted by her manservant ( Werner Peters, a fixture in these type of films). Mitchell and crew are followed by a hotel manager who knows they have the money and his ice queen sister. Cam hides the money, but the old lady finds it and hide it herself. Now things start to heat up.

Salter is found dead in a fountain. Mitchell is the likely suspect, but it’s not him. Next up is the ice queen and Jayne get into a vicious cat fight. Peters is found knifed. Someone is knocking off most of the cast. Guess who?

Even though this film is very cool, the real reason to watch it is Jayne Mansfield. She is completely over the top and in rare form. At one point she just starts doing the twist, the frug or some damn dance out of nowhere. A wacky crime caper with two of our most enduring stars.
42nd Street Pete

Grindhouse Classic Double Feature: Night of the Lepus and Stanley

It was the summer of ‘72, a hot night on the “Deuce”. Time to grab a bottle or two of Bali Hai and find a nice , air conditioned theater to drink it in. The Rialto was showing these two films, so I figured I’d duck in there to get out of this miserable heat. A double bill of animals on the rampage: Rabbits & Rattlesnakes, how could you go wrong?

Well actually you could. Is a guy in an Easter Bunny suit scary? Didn’t think so. Well you get a shit load of real bunnies hopping around miniature sets and some guys in bunny suits that drool a lot. Seems that some kid felt sorry for bunnies being experimented on, so one bunny is set free, screws every female rabbit on Arizona, they give birth to mutant, giant bunnies in search of fresh meat.

Janet Leigh, Stuart Whitman, Rory Calhoun, and Deforest Kelly all embarrass themselves in this laugh riot. The usually sedate crowd was laughing their collective asses off at this film. Leigh looks like she wished she stayed in the shower and Kelly keeps looking upward in the hope that someone will beam him up out of this movie. The rabbits leave bloody bodies all over the desert. Best line in the movie is when a deputy goes to a drive in and tells the patrons a horde of killer rabbits is headed their way.

The rabbits are eventually mass executed on some train tracks. Whitman made a couple of more genre films, Ruby and Eaten Alive. Rory Calhoun was in Motel Hell, Hell Comes to Frog Town, and the Angel series. He Died in April , 1999. Best scene in the movie has the heros trapped in the cellar. The start shooting through the floor and one bunny gets shot in the balls. The crowd went crazy over that.

Night of the Lepus was laugh fest, but Stanley was more of a what the fuck is going on? Directed by William Grefe, Stanley was shot in the Everglades and Ivan Tors Studios in Florida. Tim is a Seminole Indian who has just come back from “Nam. His best friend is a rattlesnake named Stanley. Tim’s dad was killed by poachers employed by Alex Rocco.

Tim has set up house in the ‘Glades with Stanley, his “wife” Hazel, and a houseful of snakes. Tim talks to his friends, even has them at his dinner table with a mouse under a glass for each of them. Audience members started to get really creeped out by this. Tim is made an offer by Rocco to catch him some snakes so he can use their skins. Tim is appalled that his friends might be killed for their skins.

Another “friend” of Tim’s is a washed up exotic dancer. Her manager suggests that she bite the heads off snakes during her act to attract more crowds. Tim gets “headaches” that seem to make him more unbalanced. Tim frees a bunch of snakes that the poaches have caught. He gets into a brawl with them and they vow revenge.


They hire a druggie called Psycho to come with them on the hunt. He is so fucked up that he is useless to them. The poachers leave him and go hunt for snakes. Tim has Stanley bait them . The follow Stanley into some quicksand. Holding on for life, Tim orders Stanley to bite their hands so they sink to their deaths. Psycho has found Tim’s home and he kills Hazel & her babies. Tim brawls with Psycho until Stanley bites him and he dies.

Tim goes to the nightclub and sees his friend biting off the head of a snake. He waits until she is in bed with her manager, then dumps a bunch of snakes in their bed. He also loads up Rocco’s swimming pool with water moccasins . His morning dip turns deadly. Tim grabs Rocco’s hot daughter and takes her with her. When things don’t work out, Tim orders Stanley to kill her. Stanley, obviously sick of this shit, just lies coiled up. Tim frees the rest of his friends and orders them to kill the girl. They don’t. He yells at Stanley, who bites Tim in the eye. He bites him a few more times, then the predictable fire breaks out. The girl escapes, Tim is charred , and Stanley slithers off into the swamp and retirement.

If you have any phobia about snakes, this isn’t for you. These are all real and lead actor , Chris Robinson, has a rattler wrapped around his neck during most of the film. Forget about that CG mess, Snakes on a Plane, these are the real ones. Bill Grefe , who I met a few years ago, is a cool guy and gave us Death Curse of Tartu, Jaws of Death, The Hooked Generation, and others. Chris Robinson’s portrayal of Tim is some great acting. As Tim, he seems detached from the real world as, unfortunately, some veterans were. Both films are available on DVD.
42nd Street Pete

Choppin’ Em Up at The Liberty Theater: Pieces and The Hills Have Eyes

The Liberty Theater , close to the corner of 42nd Street and 8th ave was THE place for any type of Euro sleaze. In 198, The Liberty premiered a film the really blew away the jaded audience at this venue. Pieces was the film. It’s tagline read “ You Don’t have to go to Texas for a Chainsaw Massacre”. On the one sheet was a girl that was all stitched together.

Obviously, whoever booked this film wanted to attract a big crowd. So they paired it with a proven winner, 1977’s The Hills Have Eyes. Most of “the Deuce” crowd tended to watch these films over & over again, so this pairing made a lot of sense. Truth be told, “Hills” was one of the few films that actually scared the crap out of me when I first saw it.

Pieces started with a young boy putting together a nudie puzzle. His overbearing mother finds this and goes bonkers. She found a couple of nudie mags, slaps the kid around, then yells at him to get her a plastic bag to throw all this crap in. The crowd went nuts at the plastic bag comment because this part of the film was set in the 40’s. I don’t even know if plastic was invented yet. Anyway the boy returns with an axe and chops up mom, much to the crowd’s delight.

The boy fools the cops by hiding in a closet. They think the murderer escaped. Fast forward 40 years later. Someone is chainsawing up the girls at a private school. The evidence points to the hulking handyman (Paul Smith), but even with him locked up, after he beats the crap out of a bunch of cops, which had the crowd cheering him on, the carnage continued.

Although the crowd was rowdy, certain scenes put it into shocked silence. A topless girl is chased though a locker room and there is a close up of her pissing her pants before she is sawed in half. there is a cool, slow motion decapitation, and a girl rollerskates into a mirror. Each victim is missing a body part. It is pretty obvious what the killer is doing.

Christopher George plays a world weary detective. Edmund Purdom is the Dean, and Linda Day George is a potential victim. Chris George had starred in TV’s Rat Patrol and, I believe he also did a few Noxema Shaving cream commercials. He turned to horror and exploitation just to pay the bills. He was in Fulci’s City Of the Dead, Grizzly, Dixie Dynamite, Day of the Animals, Mortuary, Graduation Day, and The Exterminator. He died, prematurely of a heart attack right after Pieces.

The big payoff in Pieces was that the dean was the killer. He is about to gut Linda Day George after drugging her. He catches a bullet between the eyes for his trouble. But that’s not all. A sewn together body topples out of a secret hiding place. They cover it with a sheet, but a hand grabs the crotch of a helpful student and rips his balls off through his jeans. Every guy there was grabbing his junk at that point. Forget about how ludicrous the scene really was. It just came out of left field and fucked up everyone’s head.

Now it was time for the co feature, The Hills Have Eyes. Funny how that thirty some odd years have passed and that film still makes me nervous. It had originally opened at the Rialto on the corner of 42nd street and 7th ave. There was a huge blow up on the marquee of Michael Berryman’s face. It was being billed as the new Freaks. We all know it was anything but.

The crowd just loved this film and any tension that Pieces built up, was overshadowed as the crowd was in full swing talking back to this film and some people were cheering the killers on.

It was amazing the punch this film still packed almost five years after its release. Pieces came & went. It showed up a couple of more time before the “Deuce” finally died. The Hills Have Eyes was released on an obscure VHS label, Harmony Video. Pieces wound up on Vestron Video, a company that seemed to favor dark prints. It fell into public domain and was released on DVD by budget label Diamond. It has since been restored by Grindhouse Releasing with a ton of extras. “ Hills” got the special treatment on DVD a couple of years ago from Anchor Bay.
42nd Street Pete

Classic Grindhouse Double Bill of Depravity: Barbed Wire Dolls & Women’s Prison Massacre

Probably one of the more depraved double bills ever to hit The Deuce. Directed by the Deacons of Depravity, Jess Franco & Bruno Mattei, these two films stretch the limit of their questionable “R” Rating. Torture, rape, violence ect, these films got the audience response they deserved when playing at the showcase of Euro sleaze, the Liberty Theater on 42nd Street.

The Stars of both movies, Lina Romay & Laura Gemser, were queens of exploitation. Both made a living staring in these type of films. Romay was and still is married to Jess Franco. Gemser was married to her frequent co star , Gabrielle Tinti, and retired soon after his death. Both ladies are a big part of exploitation history.

Dolls was so depraved that it was seldom booked any where except the Liberty. Even with Women’s Prison Massacre on top in ‘83, most patrons had seen and wanted to see Dolls again.

Barbed Wire Dolls: 1976, Directed by Jess Franco, Starring Lina Romay, Monica Swinn, & “Peggy” Markoff. Released by Aquarius Releasing

One of the more depraved WIP pictures were the prison is located on an island. The place has a filthy look to it. The warden, Monica Swinn, is wearing the shortest hot pants in WIP history. She also has a monicle stuck in her eye. Her assistant, Nestor, is the white guard, with a black man’s voice, who metes out the torture.

Though the film is pretty bloodless, it more than makes up for that with sex scenes bordering on hard core. Plenty of beaver shots, a woman masturbating with a lit cigarette, lesbo hyjinx, and more.

A prisoner, Maria, is brought in for the murder of her father. She is sentenced to life. Her father had tried to rape her. This is shown in a flashback with Franco playing “Daddy”. She kills him , or does she? , and is caught and sentence to life. She is “initiated “by strapping her to a bed frame and applying electric shocks. Bedpans are strategically placed under the bed , adding to the scummy ambience of this scene. As we did deeper into the characters, Nestor is a rapist/torturer, the Doctor isn’t a real doc, the real one was killed and this drug shooting pervert took his place and the warden has a nasty little secret too.

The warden takes select prisoners to her apartment for some fun & games. One blonde, called ‘Peggy “ Markoff in the credits to try and cash in or false advertise Margret Markoff , a WIP staple back then. She is drugged up and abused by the warden. The warden has a special hated for Maria. Maria is constantly tortured on the electro bed by Nestor. At one cringe inducing point, he shoves a switch into he ass.

The “Doctor” complains to the Warden that Maria might have a punctured bowel and “we can’t have anymore deaths”. The Warden laughs and say Maria will die because she, the Warden , had killed her father. It seems the Warden and Dad were lovers and she came on the scene when Maria was running out of the house. The jealous bitch finished off Dad and pinned the blame on Maria.

Maria and two of the other girls escape. They are pursued by Nestor and a topless guard. Nestor finds one of the prisoners and is in the process of raping her, when he is machined gunned by another guard, who runs off with the prisoner. Maria and the other girl get to the Governor’s mansion and, to freedom. Or so they think. The warden is there waiting and shoots them down. This scene actually got applause from the crowd of miscreants in the theater.

Though “Dolls” what pretty lite on the bloodshed, Women’s Prison Massacre(1985) more than made up for that. Directed by sleazemeister Bruno Mattei, this is one of the most vile WIP flicks ever made.

Emmanuelle ( Laura Gemser) is a reporter who got the goods on a corrupt official. To silence her, he had her thrown in this shitty jail. The Warden ( Lorraine De Selle ) wants her dead at the bequest of that official. She sics an imate , Albina( Ursula Flores) on her. Albina runs the prison. When left alone in the yard with Emanuelle, Albina pulls a shank and attacks. Emanuelle gets the upper hand and slices up her foe. Albina winds up in the infirmary and Emanuelle is abused by the guards, The guards are really sadistic bitches who torture the inmates for any infraction of the rules. Two overly friendly inmates are tortured by water when discovered. One girl has a male blow up doll that she uses to satisfy herself.

In the midst of all this depravity, for male prisoners are to be held there for a day or so. Crazy Boy Henderson( Gabrielle Tinti) , “Blade” Von Bauer, and two others. Blade hides a razor in his mouth and slashes a guard’s throat with it. They soon control the prison and rape some of the women , including the Warden.

An attach on the prison by the law backfires leaving several inmates dead. One girl’s lesbian lover is killed, so she is out for revenge. She puts a razor blade in a cork and puts it in her pussy. She seduces Blade, who strangles her before raping her. This scene is high on the cringe factor as Blade’s dick is split down the middle. He staggers bleeding though the halls and is torn apart by some of the inmates.

Things are rapidly deteriorating. Crazy Boy wants out and needs a car. He engages in a game of Russian Roulette with Albina, just to kill some time. Albina’s brains wind up splattered on his face. Crazy Boy, his gang now wiped out, gets his car and leaves with Emanuelle and a wounded guard. The guard and Emanuelle get the upper hand and kill Crazy Boy. The official, who wants Emanuelle dead, winds up with a bullet between the eyes. Emanuelle goes back to finish her sentence.

I think this was the last time that Laura Gemser played Emanuelle. She pretty much retired after her husband , Gabrielle Tinti passed away. This film was lost in the shuffle for many years, Shock O Rama got the rights to it and I was given it to review. I noticed that almost all of the violence had been edited out of this print. When I mentioned this to the company, they scrambled to find the uncut print. Thankfully Grindhouse Releasing had an uncut print which they graciously supplied for transfer.
42nd Street Pete

The Original Grindhouse/Drive In Double Bill: The Killer Shrews and the Giant Gila Monster

In 1959 in Texas, radio giant, Gordon McLendon, executive produced two low budget monster movies. They were produced by Ken Curtis, who later starred on the long running TV Show Gunsmoke, as Fetus. Director Ray Kellogg directed both pictures. Kellogg’s forte was special photographic effects and he is credited for close to 100 films for that. He also directed the John Wayne film, The Green Berets.

The two films packed the Drive Ins . They played the Drive In and Grindhouse circuit up until the late 60’s. Even though they were sold as a package to TV, they still showed up at the ‘Kiddee Matinees” in the early 70’s . I saw them at a matinee on my 15th birthday. Unfortunately they fell into the public domain in the early days of VHS. They were also listed as some of the worst films ever made, which I tend not to agree with.

Considering the budget restraints back then, I always found them to be entertaining. The ‘shrews” were dogs wearing fright masks and the gila monster were real lizards on miniature sets. Add casts of likeable characters to the mix, and they were pretty entertaining films.

Killer Shrews starred James Best ( Dukes of Hazzard), Ken Curtis, Ingrid Goude, and Baruch Lumet( director Sidney Lumet’s father). Captain Thorne( James Best) and his first mate, Ruk, a black dude, are delivering supplies to some scientists on an island. A storm is brewing , so he has to ride the storm out on the island. The main scientist ( Lumet), wants Thorne to take his daughter off the island. All get real nervous when they find out that Thorne won’t sail in the storm.

Thorne joins the group for dinner. Jerry ( Curtis) is a drunk and he cops an attitude toward Thorne. Thorne wants to leave , but the daughter holds a gun on him. He is told that it’s too dangerous to go out after dark. It seems that the group was experimenting with shrews. Jerry got drunk and left a cage open. Some of the experimental animals escaped and bred. A shrew must eat it’s own body weight every 8 hours or starve. Shrews usually weigh a couple of ounces, these puppies weigh 50 pounds or more.

One scientist explains that they put out poisoned meat for the beasts, but it had no effect on them. Now the creatures are eating up every living thing on the island. As darkness fall, Ruk is attacked and eaten. Thinking they are safe in the house, they plan to leave in the morning as the shrews are nocturnal. The shrews dig into the barn and eat all the live stock. One gets into the house as a falling tree rips open a shutter. Mario , the token Mexican, traps the shrew in the basement. He wakes Thorne up and they go to kill it. It bites Mario before it is riddled with bullets.

Mario dies from the bite. After an autopsy is preformed on the dead shrew, poison is found in it’s saliva. The strange parallel here is that a gila monster is one of the only lizards that has poison in it’s saliva. The shrews are now burrowing though the adobe walls to get to their victims. They decide to lash some metal drums together and use them as tanks to get to the beach, then the boat. Jerry refuses to go, stating that its suicide. Thorne and company make it to the beach. Jerry make a run for it and is killed. After they get to the boat the scientist tells them that in a few hours , the shrews will eat each other and the last one will die of starvation. ‘ a perfect example of over population” he says. Thorne makes a remark as he looks at Ingrid Goude, that “ he’ s not worried about over population right now” . wink, wink.

The Giant Gila Monster is another fun flick. Mysterious accidents are happening in a remote part of Texas. Could there be a huge, people eating lizard out in the wild area? Sure there is. Add some hot rod driving teens, a sympathetic sheriff, a lovable drunk, and a prick that wants everything his way, and you’ve got a cool movie.

Don Sullivan ( Monster of Piedras Blancas) is the older teen who keeps the others in his hot rod gang in check. The father of one of the missing teens has a king sized hard on for the kid and wants the Sheriff’s job. Mysterious wrecks keep turning up minus the people driving them. The culprit is a big lizard who attacks the cars and eats the occupants. The drunk ( Shug Fisher) see the beast derail a train. The sheriff thinks he is spinning a yarn and locks him up.

During a dance, the creature attacks. Crashing through the wall of the building. Don gets four quarts of nitro glycerin and drives his hot rod into the beast , killing it. A good film with a lot of quirky characters. A lot of McLendons were in it as Gordon McLendon was the executive producer.

I believe the company that released these was called McLendon Radio Pictures. Gordon McLendon is credited for creating the top 40 radio format and was inducted into the Radio Hall of Fame in 1994. Sadly , most of the people involved in these films are gone. Don Sullivan appeared at The Monster Bash last year in Pittsburg. Unfortunately his co star in Monster of Piedras Blancas, Jeanie Carmen, passed away of few weeks before the convention. She was also going to appear at that convention.

Though included in a lot of books as the worst films ever made, they are anything but. Sure , they are dated and you can poke fun at them. I laughed my ass off at the Mystery Science Theater 3000 versions of them. Bottom line is that they are good films and I’m glad I can say that I saw them on the big screen back in the day.
42nd Street Pete

Great Grindhouse Double Bills: The Skull and The Psychopath

I’m going to estimate the time at 1967. This wasn’t a kiddie matinee and I was about 15 years old. This double bill was playing at The Embassy Theater in Orange NJ. It was released by Paramount and produced by Amicus Productions. Both films were directed by Freddie Francis, who had worked for Hammer Films. Amicus wanted to be the successor to Hammer, the company who put British horror on the map.

Amicus even grabbed two of Hammer’s top stars, Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing, to star in the Skull(1965). Based on a story by Robert Bloch, The Skull of the Marquis De Sade, occult collector Dr Christopher Maitland ( Cushing)is offered the chance to buy the Skull from a thief. What he doesn’t know is that everyone who comes in contact with the skull meets a bad end.

The Skull was stolen from his friend Phillips ( Lee) , who is glad to be rid of it. Maitland finds himself under the influence of the Skull . Murder, black magic rituals, and violence occur. The Skull floats around and orders Maitland to murder people. The long end sequence has no dialogue or sound as Cushing is killed by the Skull.

Interesting back then, but too slow for today’s video game oriented audience. The Skull is now available on DVD , courtesy of an excellent restoration by Legendhouse. Serious fans of the genre should check out this underrated little gem

The Psychopath (1966) was the co feature. It’s tag line was “ Don’t Cross the Path of the Psychopath Unless your Tired of it All” . A detective investigates a series of murders where a doll of each victim is found at the scene. The murders are pretty inventive , including one via blow torch. The dolls belong to a crippled woman , who lives in a house full of dolls. Her weird , neurotic son lives with her and is the prime suspect. Unfortunately I had only seen this back then and haven’t seen it since. I remember the red rimed eyes of the son as he had broken his back . I believe that the mother turned out to be the killer. This never got a VHS release , but may have run on late night TV. It was a creepy little film that played well back then, but is probably too tame for today’s audiences.

Amicus films stayed in the game for quite a few years with a bunch of excellent anthology films: Tales from the Crypt, House that Dripped Blood, Torture Garden , Vault of Horror and others were all released by Amicus Productions. Most of these pictures were grindhouse and Drive In Double Bills. More to come.
42nd Street Pete

Drive In Double Feature: Sabata & The Bridge at Remagen

It was the summer of ‘71. I got my driver’s licence in ‘70 and now it was time to actually drive to that American institution , the drive in theater. And what a greater time than the 70's to sample what would soon be replaced with malls, corporate offices, and parking garages. It would be all over by the 80's but the drive ins were still cookin’ in the 70's.

We had the rural, at the time , highways dotted with these outdoor theaters. You had Morris Plains on Rt 10, Troy Hills on Rt 46, Union on Rt 22, Livingston on Rt 10, Totowa on Rt 46, Anthony Wayne on Rt 23, and others. Most were owned by the General Cinema chain of theaters.

Drive ins were outdoor grindhouses and played the same films. Sometimes they booked pictures that were completely at opposite ends of the film spectrum. Case in point with Sabata & Bridge at Remagen, a spaghetti western and a 1969 recycled war movie. We didn’t care, we just loaded the car with a couple of cases of beer and went to the Troy Hills Drive In for a night of viewing pleasure.

I was a big Lee Van Cleef fan , after seeing him in For a Few Dollars More, Good , The Bad, & The Ugly, Big Gundown & others. Sabata may have been his best role as “ The Man with the Gun Sight Eyes Comes to Kill!!” that’s what the ads said. Sabata was sort of a western James Bond. Dressed impeccably in black and armed with a bunch of deadly gadgets, Sabata decimates the army of killers that the corrupt town bosses send after him. Aided by some quirky characters, Carricha, a knife throwing drunk, Banjo, who keeps a rifle in his instrument, and Alley Cat, an acrobatic, silent killer, Sabata is never dull.

Sabata was the main feature and it started around 8;30. It was still light out, so you missed the first few minutes. Of course we were going to hang around and see it again. We had gone through one case of beer already and now it was time for the war movie. Bridge at Remagen was originally released in 1969. We had been seeing war films that kicked ass like , The Dirty Dozen, The Devil’s Brigade, and others. Bridge didn’t kick ass, it sort of sucked.

Based on a true story, Bridge at Remagen starred George Segal, Bradford Dillman, Ben Gazzara as a sergeant, and Robert Vaughn as a German officer. It was about the last intact bridge on the Rhine River and the view point was from both the American & the German side. After seeing guys like Lee Marvin, William Holden, Charles Bronson take on the entire German army, this was kinda boring. We drank more beer to make it interesting, but it wasn’t.

There were a lot of tanks in that movie. When you drink enough beer, the stupidest of ideas become intriguing. Someone starting talking about tanks and now Sabata was back on. The place was almost deserted except for couples too cheap to get a hotel room. This tank conversation took over until I decided that I was going to play tank and shut these guys up. I drove to the back of the drive in and started hitting the mounds between speakers at about 30mph. We flew about two feet in the air in my ‘63 Dodge Dart. These guys were bouncing of the ceiling and each bump rattled my teeth, but this was good , drunken fun.

They begged me to stop, so I parked and we finished Sabata for the second time that night. Admittedly , Sabata & The Bridge at Remagen were a weird pairing. Both films were released by United Artists. I would guess that action films were just hooked up with other action films, regardless of the genre. There were a lot of weird pairings back then. But none weirder than the 42nd Street double bill of Hells Angels ‘69 & Spirits of the Dead. But that night is a whole other story
42nd Street Pete

My First Euro Horror Double Feature: The Bloody Pit of Horror & Terror Creatures from the Grave 1965

I was a whole 13 years old when I got dropped off in front of the Embassy Theater in Orange ,NJ for the weekly “kiddee matinee” on Saturday. If I remember correctly, the movies that day were two AIP beach party movies. But as I stood in front of that theater, I saw something that was a lot more interesting than Annette Funicello.

The regular features running that week were two films that I never had heard of before, The Bloody Pit of Horror & Terror Creatures from the Grave. “ My Vengeance Needs Blood” the one sheet screamed. Now this looked really good, but how was I going to get away with seeing them when I was getting picked up a 5pm and this double feature started at 6pm?

Even at 13, my mind was already warped. I called home and said that so and so’s Mom was picking us up and we were going over his house to hang out and I would call when it was time to go home. It worked. When the Beach Party stuff was over, I just sat in the back of the darkened theater. A couple of winos were passed out back there, so no one really paid any attention.

At 6pm Bloody Pit of Horror came on. The late Mickey Hargitay had been in Italy filming Primitive Love with his wife, Jayne Mansfield. In between , he found time to do this exercise in sadism. Mickey is the owner of a castle that he has rented out for a photo shoot. A horde of buxom models and their photographers show up. The castle previously was home to a sadistic torturer known as the Crimson Executioner.

When the models enter the torture chamber for some cheesecake shots, Mickey loses it and becomes The Crimson Executioner. He dons some red tights and a mask, then busies himself by cutting, burning, and stretching the rest of the cast. As cheezy as this film may look today, this was the greatest stuff my 13 year old eyes had ever seen. Mickey was out of his fucking mind, shamelessly chewing up the scenery and mugging for the camera. He laughed like a crazy man as he did his thing.

Using various devices, he had strapped a woman on this thing that had knives slice into her as it turned. Another lucky victim had boiling oil or tar splashed on her. There is also a scene with a big spider web and a giant spider. Mickey is eventually pushed into his own iron maiden. As he dies, he yells something about ruining his perfect body.

Terror Creatures from the Grave was in black & white and starred horror queen, at the time, Barbra Steele. Where Bloody Pit of Horror was completely over the top, Terror Creatures was more atmospheric and spooky. An occultist is murdered by his wife ( Steele) and friends. He returns as a ghost and, though some really spooky recording, vows dire revenge on his murderers.

His ghosts summons some dead, medieval plague victims to help him get revenge. These “victims” were put to death for actually spreading the plague. A showcase of severed arms comes to life in a creepy scene. Victims are picked off one by one. In my first on screen disembowelment, a wheelchair bound victim runs himself into a sword rather then face the plague spreaders. A rotting, sore covered arm pulls the wheelchair away as his intestines fall out.

You never see the plague spreaders, just their arms. Plague spores are tossed into victim’s faces where it works like acid. All involved in the murder of the occultist are killed. The plague spreaders are closing in on the hero & heroine, when it starts to rain. The pure water forces the creatures back to their graves.

Both films were directed by Massimo Pupillo under English pseudonyms. For Bloody Pit he was “Max Hunter” . For Terror Creatures, he was Ralph Zucker. Both films were released by Pacemaker ,who also gave us Fiendish Ghouls & Horrors of Spider Island. For whatever reason, Pupillo was unsatisfied with the way Terror Creatures turned out and gave the films producer, Ralph Zucker, directorial credit. When Zucker passed away in 1982, a lot of people thought it was Pupillo who died. Puppilo direct a spaghetti western, Django Kills Softly in 1967. Though he is still with us, he hasn’t done any films since 1981.

Both films fell into the public domain. Sinister Cinema had released them as one of their drive in double features . Something Weird Video found a mint print of Bloody Pit of Horror and released it on Image. Terror Creatures from the Grave was kicked around on a bunch of PD tapes & DVDs. The print offered by Alpha is horrible and has a listed running time of 60 something minutes, but it runs way longer than that. If I remember correctly the Sinister Cinema print was widescreen, I just order that DVD from them to put in the archives.

Oh, I did wind up getting caught in the lie. I stayed to see Bloody Pit of Horror a second time. By the time I called home, it was after 10pm and I was in deep shit. I got grounded from the movies for two weeks. I would have to say it was worth it.
42nd Street Pete

Great Grindhouse Double Features: Sssss & The Boy Who Cried Werewolf

I was working the job of a life time, or so I thought, I was managing the Livingston Drive In. It was the summer of “73, I was on break for college. I was soon to be on permanent break ‘cause of the gas shortage of “74, but that’s another story.

I thought this would be a great job, silly me. It was a split shift. You came in at 10am, did paperwork, cleaned up the field, painted, repaired speakers, and other hump work until 2pm. Then you had to be back at 5pm until whenever. I thought I would get to see some great movies. Unfortunately I wasn’t privy to how these films were booked.

Union Drive In got all the Blacksplotation stuff and Spaghetti Westerns. Morris Plains , Troy Hills & Totowa got all the horror, exploitation, and Euro Action films. We got Disney, Egg Head Films, and big mainstream shitty movies.

I could go , on my day off , to any of the other Drive Ins for free. That I did. Then I finally got a horror double bill, Sssss and The Boy Who Cried Werewolf. I was excited until I saw the PG rating. “ Gonna suckl” I thought. I had to screen the prints when we opened Wednesday night just to make sure you could see them. Sssss was no problem, but Werewolf was dark. I complained ,but the company didn’t want to replace the film as it was a “package deal” from Universal. Actually ,it was one of Universal’s last double features.

So now I had to leave a recorded message of the start times. How do you say Sssss? I just hissed it and hoped for the best. Sssss was arguably the better of the two films. Starring Strother Martin, Dirk Benedict, and Heather Menzies, and supported by 70's stalwarts Jack Ging and a young Reb Brown, Sssss used real snakes , a King Cobra, Black Mamba, & a Python, instead of the fake rubber ones. In fact none of the snakes were defanged for this film. Five King Cobras were brought in from Thailand and the python was from Singapore.

Directed by Bernard Kolwalski ( Attack of the Giant Leeches) and the make up is credited to a John Chambers. Before the credits, Dr. Stoner, ( Martin) is selling something in a crate to a guy who runs a freak show. It seems the demented Doc has been trying to turn his lab assistants into cobras to survive the coming nuclear holocaust. The thing is the crate is one of his failures.

A new assistant is recommended by a rival doctor. David is his new assistant, who Stoner wastes no time giving him “immunization” injections. David has some hallucinatory dreams on this shit.

Stoner has a King Cobra that he calls “The King”. He runs a venom show to get the cash he needs to keep his experiments going. Things go wrong when his pet boa, Harry, is killed by a drunken jock( Brown). Stoner releases a black mamba while the jock is taking a shower. David now is starting to shed his skin. He visits the carnival and comes face to face with his predecessor, now an exhibit, in the freak show.

The professor, who recommended David for the job, tells Stoner his grant has been refused. Stoner knocks him out and throws him in a cellar with a hungry python. Stoner’s daughter, Kristina, is worried about David. She goes to the carnival and realizes that the snake man is Tim, Stoner’s last assistant. She then knows that David is going to wind up the same way.

David now morphs into a King Cobra . Stoner , for some reason, decides to have it out with “The King”. Things are deteriorating rapidly. A mongoose gets out of it’s cage and attacks snake Dave. Stoner is bitten a couple of times by The King. Kristina arrives to find Dr. Stoner dead and “ The King” in attack mode. The sheriff takes the King’s head off with a shotgun blast. Snake David is being chewed on by the mongoose as the film freezes on Kristina’s screaming face.

This was pretty good. The presence of the great character actor, Strother Martin, gave the project credibility. Martin’s earnest performance of the deranged Dr Stoner saves the film from being your typical ‘ Mad Scientist Creates Monster ‘ roots. You actually feel sorry for David as he painfully turns into a snake.

Martin, who achieved fame in films like Cool Hand Luke, The Wild Bunch and others, did a few more genre films, westerns and TV shows before his death in 1980. Dirk Benedict found fame on the TV show, the A-Team. Heather Menzies did a couple of more genre films, Piranha and Endangered Species plus a lot of TV shows. Director Kolwalski directed a ton of TV Shows like Magnum PI, Nightrider, Air Wolf, Jake & the Fat Man and many others before his death in 2007. Look for Addams Family star , Felix Silla as The Seal Boy in the freak show.

As good as Sssss is , The Boy Who Cried Werewolf sucked. I had more problems with rowdy patrons during that film. Where Ssss held their interest, Werewolf seemed to piss them off. First mistake was showing a fully transformed werewolf before the credits. Second was having this whinny bitch of a kid, Scott Sealey, in a pivotal role. The main star, Kerwin Mathews, was in a bunch of regular people meet big monster period pieces like 7th Voyage of Sinbad, Jack the Giant Killer, Three Worlds of Gulliver & others. The director, Nathan Juran, was no strangers to giants either as he directed Attack of the 50 Foot woman. Both directors directed Attack of the Something films.

Let’s see, we have an annoying kid, a werewolf that causes traffic accidents, pushes a camper off a cliff, and rips an arm off, ( off camera).Jesus freaks, a tough sheriff( veteran western actor ,Robert J Wilke), some blood , and a lot of boredom. Like the boy who cried wolf story, no one pays attention to this kid. Considering that he did this film and one episode of Emergency!, no one was really paying attention to his career either.

The werewolf make up was an early creation of Tom Burman. However a werewolf wearing a turtle neck sweater just doesn’t cut it for me. I kept thinking about the Warren Zevon song Werewolves of London, the line where , “his hair was perfect”. Even the cheap dissolve transformation scene bites more than this werewolf.

I never saw this film even though I had it running for a week. I was breaking up drunken fights and escorting the rowdies off the lot. Ssss ran twice a night, Werewolf ran only once as the co feature. We started running films around 8;30 pm as the sun was setting. Intermission was at 10pm, then the second film at 10:20. Snack Bar closed at 11;30 pm. Last showing was around 12;30. I only recently caught up with this on a “convention” DVD-R. So I waited over 30 years to see this clunker and ,trust me on this, it wasn’t worth the wait.

Star Kerwin Mathews also did a lot of Euro films, Octaman with Pier Angeli & Jeff Morrow, Barquero with Lee Van Cleef & Warren Oats, and some TV appearances. He died in 2007. Director Nathan Juran also moved on to direct TV shows like Lost in Space, Time Tunnel, and Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea. He had won an Oscar for art direction in 1941 for How Green was my Valley. He died in October of 2002. Looks like a lot of former B Movie directors found a home directing TV shows. More great and not so great grindhouse double bills to come.

42nd Street Pete