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“Everything Revealed! Nothing Explained!”–tagline for Teenage Tupelo
DIRECTED BY:John Michael McCarthy
FEATURING: D’Lana Tunnell, Hugh Brooks, Wanda Wilson
PLOT: Voluptuous D’Lana Fargo is knocked up by local Tupelo singer Johnny Tu-Note. Her mother sets up an adoption, and Johnny wants her to get rid of the baby. D’Lana falls in with a group of “Man Haters” who are fans of stripper/sexploitation filmmaker Topsy Turvy, who is the spitting image of D’Lana.
BACKGROUND:
- Teenage Tupelo was the first (and only) original production released by Something Weird video. It was released directly to VHS but never made the transition to DVD, going out of print and becoming unavailable for decades.
- Produced by legendary exploitationeer David Friedman, a longtime collaborator of Herschell Gordon Lewis who also produced such oddities as The Acid Eaters (1968) and Ilsa, She Wolf of the S.S. (1975).
- The film was shot on Super-8 for $12,000.
- McCarthy’s adoptive parents appear as extras in the diner; their younger alter-egos are played by actors.
INDELIBLE IMAGE: Almost certainly, you will remember the birth-of-a-baby scene (borrowed from the 1948 roadshow shocker Because of Eve). Even if you’ve seen a live birth before, it’s still shocking to see this sight casually shuffled into a narrative film context—and, accompanied by a tinkly music box rendition of “Frère Jacques,” it comes across as decidedly unwholesome. Viewer beware!
TWO WEIRD THINGS: Battered Johnny Tu-Note serenades vixen; chainsaw devil tattooist
WHAT MAKES IT WEIRD: Teenage Tupelo plays like director McCarthy took Something Weird Video’s entire vintage VHS catalog, ran it through a woodchipper, and used the resulting pulp to sculpt his own phantasmagorical autobiography. It’s utterly unique, history’s first postmodern grindhouse film.
Trailer for the soundtrack release of Teenage Tupelo
COMMENTS: Not too many exploitation films open with an epigraph—even if it does come from a fortune cookie—but Teenage Continue reading 37*. TEENAGE TUPELO (1995)