PRIMITIVE SCREWHEADS

The Black Six 1974

The Black Six 1974 Written by George Theakos and directed by Matt Cimber. This is the second movie on the Alpha Video disc with The Black Gestapo. Sadly it's got an even worse script. The Black Six are a motorcycle gang, all 6 characters are played by 70s NFL football players, Gene Washington, Joe "Mean Joe" Green, Eugene "Mercury" Morris, Lemuel "Lem" Barney, Willie Lanie and Carl Eller. I didn't know any of them by name except Mean Joe. In the movie Gene's brother is killed by a white supremacist motorcycle gang for dating the leader's sister. The Black Six ride to the town to find out more. They get in some fights with the white supremacists and there's a big battle at the end of the film. It was apparently filmed with the Black Six dying but people didn't like the end. The film makers edited it so poorly that you can't tell what's going on during the battle. Really, it's a stunningly bad ending. The film makers need a bit of the old bish bash bosh from Paul Naschy's flaming skull. Apply liberally to their nether regions. You can check it out on YouTube above. I gave it a generous 2 on the IMDb. It's a stinker.

The Black Gestapo 1975

The Black Gestapo 1975 Story by Lee Frost, Wes Bishop and Ronald Goldman, screenplay by Lee Frost and Wes Bishop, directed by Lee Frost. It's a hard life being poor and black in Watts, the mob lays a heavy hand on the local black businesses. The all white gangsters rape their women and beat up their men. General Ahmed has started a small group to help the locals but they aren't too effective against the mob's thugs. After getting beat up pretty badly Ahmed lets Colonel Kojah start a more militant wing to protect the locals. That backfires as Kojah goes full on cray-cray and chops a mobsters balls off. He goes full on Nazi with his black shirted military unit. Ahmed gets tossed out of the group and he fights back to take down Kojah. I get the sentiment but the execution is pretty poor. There's no money and despite all the writers the script is weak. There's plenty of physical action but it's pretty poor. I gave it a generous 4 on the IMDb. I watched the Alpha Video DVD with The Black Six as a bonus. I'm off to watch that. You can watch the movie on YouTube, see link above.

Naughty School Girls 1975

 

Naughty School Girls 1975 Written by Alonzo Pye and directed by Jean-Paul Scardino. The Blazer Girls seems to be the original title, the copy on YouTube I found has the Naughty School Girls title.

A comedy set in a private girls school, five girls want to raise $500 by selling their virginity at a $100 each. It's pretty typical of it's genre, there's a goofy story, a fair bit of nudity and some sexier bits. The jokes are so-so but the girls are cute. It's about average. You can see a so-so print on YouTube, it's watchable, but should you. Depends on how much time you've got left. YouTube has a plethora of these type of films, I haven't seen many of them, some might be better than this.

Psyched By The 4D Witch 1973

Psyched By The 4-D Witch 1973 Written and directed by Victor Luminera. It's Victor's only movie and it was pretty much a one man operation.

It's got a fair bit of nudie footage, mostly with that young lady, plus added psychedelic footage. The psychedelic stuff is really tough to watch, that screencap is one of the more viewable images from the psychedelic part of the film. Much of it's so dark and muddy it's hard to make out what's going on. The young lady has imaginary fantasy softcore sexual encounters. Sadly, they aren't every interesting. Nothing good to say about it, other than, eventually it ended. You can check it out over at the Internet Archive, link in title above.

Blood Of Ghastly Horror 1971

Blood Of Ghastly Horror 1971 Written by Al Adamson, Mark Eden, Chris Martino, Dick Poston and Samuel M Sherman, directed by Al Adamson. This is the third version of Psycho A Go-Go, like the second version, The Fiend With The Electronic Brain, new footage was shot for a newish version of the story that has footage from the previous two films. You can read more about the changes on the films Wikipedia page.

The film starts with a half dozen people being strangled, the last being a two header with these gormless idiots mugging to the camera.

John Carradine plays a scientist who puts a device in Roy Morton's head in the second version. Roy thanks him for making him a homicidal killer by putting John in his own machine.

New footage with Kent Taylor, Tommy Kirk and Regina Carrol was added for the third version, Tommy's a cop looking back at an old case. Tommy Kirk said he got $1000 for a couple of days work and is was the low point of his career. Sad, huh.

Like Jerry Warren and his ilk, Al and Sam should have the fleshless skull of Paul Naschy banged repeatedly on their nether regions as punishment for making these films. Psycho A Go-Go is nearly a film, they should have left it at that. Of course, they all went on to make more bad films. Don't watch them, watch something better.

The Rebel Rousers 1970

 

The Rebel Rousers 1970 Written by Michael Kars, Abe Polsky and Martin B Cohen, directed by Martin B Cohen. It's was Martin's only directing job. He wrote one more film, Humanoids From The Deep, and produced handful more. The Rebel Rousers was filmed in 1967 but not released until 1970. The Rebel Rousers is part of the Biker Triple Feature DVD set.

Cameron Mitchell comes to a small coastal town looking for his girlfriend, she ran away because she's carrying his child. On the street Cameron runs into Bruce Dern, a friend he hadn't seen in some time. They say hello and Cameron moves along to find his girlfriend. He finds her and it turns out that she's played by Diane Ladd. They visit a while and go for a drive.

Bruce is part of a motorcycle gang that includes Harry Dean Stanton and Jack Nicholson. Bruce is the voice of reason in a gang that is happy to loot, rape and pillage. Bruce isn't there when the gang decides to bother Cameron and Diane while they are parked. Things turn violent and even Bruce's intervention doesn't stop Cameron from getting a mighty beat down.

Things get worse as the bikers get more and more out of hand. Eventually the locals rise up, shoot Jack, and drive the bikers off the beach. Not enough bikers died that afternoon. They really were dicks. Not the kind of people I would like to hang around.

It's alright, nothing stands out as special, other than the interesting cast. I doubt I'll watch it again but I'll keep the DVD anyway.

Watermelon Man 1970

Watermelon Man 1970 Written by Herman Raucher and directed by Melvin Van Peebles. I'd seen the movie when it came out but hadn't seen it in years.

Godfrey Cambridge plays a white family man who sells insurance. He's kind of an obnoxious boor and a bit of a bigot. One day he wakes up and finds he's turned black. Over the next couple of days poor Godfrey loses his job, his doctor, his wife and kids. The neighbors throw rocks through his windows. They start calling, telling him to move out, eventually a delegation shows up in his living room. They'll buy him out, paying him $100,000 for his $38,000 house. He goes off, buys an apartment building and opens his own insurance agency. 

Estelle Parsons plays Godfrey's wife, Erin Moran plays his daughter, Howard Caine is his boss, Kay E Kuter plays his doctor, Mantan Moreland plays the counterman at a cafe, D'Urville Martin (director of Dolemite) plays a bus driver, Paul Williams plays a clerk and Emil Sitka plays a delivery man.

I thought the story was entertainingly told, Van Peebles uses fast cuts, variable film speeds, psychedelic images, adds text and other visual hoopla to add to the narrative. It's got plenty of laughs but it's still a pretty serious and angry film. Godfrey does a great job as the poor guy who has his life turned completely over. Worth seeing. Makes me glad I picked up the DVD.

Friday Night Movies 850

Yeti: Giant Of The 20th Century 1977 Written by Mario Di Nardo and Giancarlo Parolini, directed by Frank Kramer. Italian Yeti movie filmed partially in Toronto.

We watched the Blu-ray of the film. I thought I hadn't seen it before but I recognized the scene with the rich businessman in a box under a helicopter from the first scene in the film. I didn't remember much of the rest of the film. I watched it on YouTube back in July 2012. That YouTube video is still there, it looks pretty poor, there's another version on YouTube that looks better. Link in the title above. Of course the Blu-ray looks even better but I can't see paying 20 bucks for a copy.

It is a pretty entertaining movie but for all the wrong reasons, I'm laughing at it. There's way too many goofy goings on to poke fun at to get at them all. The Yeti's costume provided much humor and none of us could keep a straight face on viewing the sad puppy dog looks the Yeti had for the pretty girl. The theme is pretty annoying and they use it repeatedly through the film. I guess they paid for it, they're going to get their money out of it, no matter how inappropriate it is. You can do better by way of Yeti or Bigfoot type of films. Still, it's a laugh, isn't it.

Men & Chicken 2015 Written and directed by Anders Thomas Jensen. A Danish film about family, told in the oddest way.

Gabriel and Elias are brothers, when their father dies they are given a tape and the father explains he's not their real dad. They find that real dad lives on an island so they go to visit him. They get smacked around by their three violent brothers. The island brothers live in an abandoned building with their animals.  Those three turn out to be even more off the scale from normal than Gabriel and Elias are. All the brothers have some level of physical deformation, most notably a harelip, and their mental abilities are subpar, except for Gabriel, he's noticeably smarter than the others and he's had some surgery to fix his lip. Gabriel is also much less violent than the others.

Gabriel pushes to meet the dad until he finds the man's mummified corpse in bed upstairs. Gabriel digs out the truth and it's a sad story. Pop was a sterile geneticist who impregnated their mothers with a goo made from animal DNA and his own stem cells. Sadly, he wasn't so good at it and there were lots of deaths in the process. The mothers all died because of the fatal caesarean births that their father preformed. Generally, the father was a cruel beast who should have been put down.

It's a rather dark comedy that made me laugh out loud a couple times, both were scenes of slapstick violence between the brothers. It paints an interesting picture of Danish mental health. It's not a film for everyone. Glad to have seen it but wouldn't necessarily need to see it again.

The Freakmaker 1974

The Freakmaker 1974 Written by Edward Mann and Robert D Weinbach, directed by Jack Cardiff. Originally released at The Mutations. Heavily influenced by Tod Browning's Freaks.

Donald Pleasence is a scientist who wants to merge humans with plants to create superior beings. Donald has Tom Baker, and some little people, kidnap subjects for his experiments. Tom is a heavily deformed man who co-owns a circus freak sideshow with Michael Dunn. Turns out Donald's not so good at his job and the failures that live are turned over to Tom to put on display. Donald hopes to help Tom look more normal with his science and Tom is getting impatient for something to happen. Tom's a horrible man who treats his employees poorly. He really hates them and they aren't too friendly with them either.

Things fall apart for our characters as the movie progresses and the tension builds between Tom and Donald and the sideshow people. It's a bleak tale with an appropriate ending. It's a bit pokey and tends to wander off the story with odd visual scenes. You can try it out on YouTube, the link is in the title above. It's a creepy thing with some gore and violence. It's not outstanding but it is unusual. Some of the make up is rather ludicrous, that's the movie's weakest point but it still manages to deliver an odd story that kept me interested to the end. I hadn't seen the movie since I'd first seen it in 1994 so I had forgotten what it was all about. I'd watch it again, hopefully sooner than 27 years.

The Love Epidemic 1975

The Love Epidemic 1975 Brian Trenchard-Smith wrote, directed and produced the film, Michael Laurence gets a comedy material credit. Brian's a familiar face to the genre fan with titles like Leprechaun 3, Leprechaun 4: In Space, BMX Bandits, and Dead End Drive-In to his credit. He might not be able to buy a car with that credit but people look at the titles of his films and say, "Ya, I've seen that."

The film's a mix of documentary and sex comedy, there's actual history and medical info about venereal disease sandwiched between raunchy sketches. The jokes were kind of flat, the info kind of gross at times. There's a fair bit of nudity, both male and female, and some simulated sex. It's on the Internet Archive. You can find the link in the title above. I might watch it again, who knows.