PRIMITIVE SCREWHEADS

The Naughty Shutter 1963

The Naughty Shutter is the third film on the Something Weird DVD. Like the other two, The Girl From S.I.N. and Henry's Night In the movie uses the gimmick of invisibility, sort of. There's a magical camera that takes pictures of people that show them with their clothes off. It's pretty dumb but there's more naked gals parading around for little or no reason. One thing most of these movies have in common, other than the boobies, is the stories are barely thought out. There's not much thought on the set either. While I complain about the lack of quality in the film I think it's great that Something Weird Video takes the effort to find and release this old films. They're the Janus/Criterion for sleaze. That's a good thing.

Henry's Night In 1969

Henry's Night In is another film on the same DVD as The Girl From S.I.N. and like that movie the gimmick is invisibility. A guy has a poor marriage, his wife isn't too happy with him, she's thinking of leaving him. He finds an old diary which has a formula to turn invisible. He starts humping some of the neighbor ladies, in the dark while pretending to be their men. It's pretty much a comedy, one where the jokes are only fairly good, but they make up for it with a lot of nude women. At least it has a bit more story than most of these films. You might get a laugh out of it. I got a couple.

The Girl From S.I.N. 1966

The Girl From S.I.N. is a 1966 exploitation spy spoof. It's pretty poor. There's a rudimentary story with a lot of nudity. The gimmick in the film is invisibility. A scientist creates a pill that makes you temporarily invisible. There's a baddie who wants the formula but his henchmen are pretty poor and they all fail. There's not much going for it. I was glad to have gotten it from Netflix and I kind of fast forwarded through some of the dull scenes.

Bad Girls Do Cry 1965

Bad Girls Do Cry is the third film on a DVD from Something Weird Video. The IMDb said Sid Melton directed the 1965 film. Yes, the same Sid from Fingerprints Don't Lie and Make Room For Daddy. The IMDb lists no writer and that makes sense after watching the film. It scores the lowest score of any of the three movies on the DVD, the voters at the IMDb gave it a 2.8 and that's about what it is. The IMDb say this film was really made in 1954 but somehow not released until 1965. It could be, there isn't any nudity, just a lot of underwear.

Stripper Misty Ayers plays a young woman who goes to the big city only to get drugged. She winds up in the hands of some baddies who turn her into a hooker. She meets a nice guy who tires to help her leave. The baddies kill him and things get messy when it turns out he's the son of local big shot. Not much of a movie. Only interesting for what it is.

Good Time With A Bad Girl 1967

Here's the second movie on the Something Weird disc. Good Time With A Bad Girl is a 1967 film about a girl who leaves home and comes to Las Vegas. it's written by Jim Mahon. He made about 60 of this sort of movie. Sadly he's not much of a film maker. A rich business man is flying home to the west coast when an electrical storm puts his private plane down in Las Vegas. He calls his wife to come stay with him but she isn't interested. Bored he goes out gambling and drinking. He winds up picking up the bad girl, they drink and run about, ending up swimming in their underwear in his hotel room's small pool. That's right each room has a pool in it. A pool big enough for 3-4 people to stretch out but not to swim. More like a giant bathtub. 

He doesn't have sex with her once he finds out she's still a virgin but they sleep together. Next day they go out horseback riding and she winds up running off with the cowboys. One of the cowboys is an uncredited John Beck. You might remember him from Rollerball. The movie ends with the business man going home to his wife and wondering about the poor girls who get wrapped up in the life. He didn't get much of a good time when all said and done.

Not much of a movie, only 60 minutes, and there isn't as much nudity as you might like. Mahon's poor film making techniques don't help. I got a laugh or two but it still a sad ass story when you get down to it.

Girl In Trouble 1963

Girl In Trouble is a 1963 exploitation film that's part of a three movie disc from Something Weird. It's about a young woman who wants a bit of excitement before she settles down to getting married to her childhood sweetheart. She sneaks off and goes to New Orleans looking for excitement.

She gets a room in a sleazy hotel but the desk clerk spies on her undressing so she leaves. She gets a room in a boarding house. The woman who runs the house leads her to a prostitution ring. She has issues and eventually takes an overdose of sleeping pills. She survives and her childhood sweetheart finds her and takes her home.

There is a bit of nudity but not too much. Most of the dialog is done post and the gal in the story narrates her story. It's less sordid than you'd think but I guess for the times it would have been pretty racy. It's also kind of slow moving and the 81 minute movie takes a while to get to the end. At least it had a happyish ending, our narrator could have died and have been telling us the story as a ghost. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone other than those that might like to see these sort of exploitation films.

Odd Squad

While I was blogging about the last series of The Saint I watched the few free episodes of Odd Squad on Amazon Prime. They have 7 half hour episodes of this US/Canadian kids show that runs on PBS.

It's got a team of agents that work for Odd Squad and help people with their problems. They solve the problems with logic, math and gadgets. It's all pretty silly and I laughed occasionally. I wouldn't bother watching the pay episodes, the ones I saw were enough for me.

The Saint Series 6

I'm all done with The Saint for now. The 6th and last series has 20 episodes and like the last series they are all in color. The total number of episodes is 118.

Here's the episodes, below the page break, with synopsis by don @ minifie-1.

Fellowship Of The Frog 1959

Fellowship Of The Frog is a 1959 German film. That's the world wide alternate title, the previous US title was Faces Of The Frog. It shares a DVD with the movie below this post and it's more entertaining than it's disc mate. The movie is based on a novel by Edgar Wallace. Egon Eis, writing under the name Trygve Larsen, and J. Joachim Bartsch wrote the script, which was directed by Harald Reinl.

The Frog, that's him in the mask above, is a robber who has a fair size gang behind him. No one knows who he is. The police are after him and so is a rich American amateur sleuth with a sports car and a butler. There's a subplot with the spoiled son of a stern father. Sonny gets into big trouble, the Frog frames him for murder. The son's sister is the romantic lead for the amateur sleuth. It all works out well in the end and I was glad to have seen it.

The Mad Executioners 1963

The Mad Executioners is a 1963 German film that was adapted from an Edgar Wallace novel. Robert a Stemmle is the writer and the director is Edwin Zbonek. It's another 2 movie disc from Netflix. The other film on the disc is just above this one. The movie was released in 1963 in German but not until nearly 2 years later in the US.

It's a crime story, a group of citizens are acting as judge, jury and executioners. They have a crypt for their judgin' and they sit behind coffins in black robes and hoods. The accused are tried and found guilty pretty much right away. They are immediately sent to the gallows and hung. The executioners use the same hangman's rope, stolen from Scotland Yard, for the hangin'. The men who get hung are all pretty scummy. They escaped justice for their crimes, at least until the gang caught up with them. The cops want to put a stop to the gang and they work through the movie toward that end.

Pretty entertaining, I thought. The IMDb says it's a 6 and I concur. Worth a look for me but not one I would want to buy. I doubt I'd ever get around to it again.