Tag Archives: Sexploitation

Alfred Eaker's Fringe Cinema

RUSS MEYER’S FASTER PUSSYCAT, KILL! KILL! (1965)

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Russ Meyer has been criminally underrepresented here on 366 Weird Movies.  We will pay penance by covering one of his earliest and biggest cult films.

Faster Pussycat, Kill! Kill! (1965) comes by its cult reputation honestly. once proclaimed it “the greatest movie ever made.”  Like most of Meyer’s films, it was initially dismissed as cheap sexpolitation, but there is always more to Meyer than surface, fetish, or cleavage. It stars the statuesque half-Japanese/half-Apache Tura Satana as a black leather clad dominatrix Varla, who left such an impression that a hard rock band took its name from the movie.

In addition to buxom wrasslin’ babes, go-go-dancers, and desert hot rod racing, FPKK is imbued with Meyer’s trademark, frenetic precision editing, sharp and superior black and white photography by Walter Schenk, an aptly kitsch score from the psychotronic lounge by Paul Sawtell and Bert Shefter that echoes the dusty terrain, and good sound: all of which are rarities for shoestring-budgeted indies.  Meyer self-distributed his pictures, so his body of work has been well preserved.

Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! (1965)

Naturally, with all the bouncing cleavage, obligatory catfights, jeans that probably had to be sewed on, and discreet peek-a-boo shots of bathing Amazonians, Meyer has been accused of blatant sexism. Yet, it is the women who are empowered. Varla’s first victim is a bland goody two-shoes, straight out of Pleasantville, Tommy (Ray Barlow), who is stupid enough to challenge her in a drag race.  When Varla suddenly snaps Tommy’s spine in two, we cave in and start rooting for her in spite of ourselves (as we always do with in the John Waters films). Along with Rosie () and Billie (Lori Williams), Varla lassos, drugs, and kidnaps Tommy’s bright-eyed gal pal Linda (Sue Bernard, looking like a reject from “Gilligan’s Island”).

After some hot-rodding on the dunes (“alright chicks, let’s see who’s chicken”), the foursome stop at a gas station whose attendant Mickey (Michael Finn) would fit right in with Goober and Gomer in Mayberry.

Mickey: “The thrill of the open road! New places, new people, new sights of interest. That’s what I believe in, seeing America first.”

Varla (reacting to his looking down her top as he pumps her gas): “You won’t find it down there, Columbus.”

Trying to score points, Mickey tells the women of an inheritance awaiting at a desert ranch, which leads them to a crippled right-wing hayseed Old Man (), his dumb ox of a son Vegetable (Dennis Busch), and second son Kirk (Paul Trinka). “Women! They let Continue reading RUSS MEYER’S FASTER PUSSYCAT, KILL! KILL! (1965) →

Alfred Eaker's Fringe Cinema

SOMETHING WEIRD TRAVELING ROADSHOW FILMS II: DAMAGED GOODS (1961)/THE HARD ROAD (1970)

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Today we tend to primarily (or solely) think of “Roadshow” films  as “filler” exploitation films for the pre-television era. However, Wikipedia’s entry on “roadshow releases” is a useful in-depth tool on their history, revealing the initial understanding of the term was as a format, rather than genre. Of course, we’re not interested in “classy” roadshow features like Ben Hur or Cleopatra, but in the sexploitation features that took to the road to show audiences glimpses of forbidden fruit—movies that couldn’t be booked in regular suburban theaters because of their salacious content. The first part of this series dealt with the phenomenon in the repressed Forties; for this installment, we move into the swinging Sixties.

Damaged Goods (1961) introduces us to the archetypal early Sixties couple. They are practically the plot of the Everly boys’ hit “Wake Up Little Susie,” except that she didn’t fall asleep and her name is Judy. Judy’s man meat is Jim, an auto mechanic who likes to take of his shirt while elbow deep in grease. Judy gets lectured by her old man for carousing in one of those nefarious “car clubs.” In addition to listening to the geezer drone on and on and on about how these young whippersnappers are all up to no good, she has to stare at bad parental haircuts and Mormon wallpaper. Poor Judy gets grounded. Jim gets distracted by Kathy, the new brunette in town.

Still from Damaged Goods (1961)Kathy shows more cleavage and leg than Judy. Poor Judy has to leave town, which opens the door to a weekend of sin for Jim and Kathy , which includes roller coasters and forbidden kisses.

Kathy has a penchant for shoplifting, cigarettes, and ménages à trois. Judy likes to iron. Who is Jim going to pick? Choices, choices! A trip to Tantalizing Bubbles, the local strip joint, should take Jim’s mind off things. Well, that didn’t work well, because it takes Jim straight to weenie roasts and beer with Kathy. Lions, tigers, and bears! Oh my! Judy’s out, and Jim’s breaking Biblical taboos with Kathy.

Jim’s got the clap now, and has to endure a Mormon-styled sex education film. He and Judy survive it. We don’t.

The Hard Road (1970) opens with a dizzy migraine of an edit, honing in on newspaper headlines about sex, hair spray, sex, LSD, sex, tripling illegitimate birth rates, sex, deformed babies, sex, heroin, sex, gun-wielding glue sniffers, sex, pot, VD, sex, the drug called speed, sex, Frisco juveniles, and more sex. That all adds up to a hard road. You know things are going to get bad when we become privy to roadshow mise-en-scène via delinquents with Beatles posters in their rooms.

Seventeen-year-old Pam got knocked up, and has to give the bastard Continue reading SOMETHING WEIRD TRAVELING ROADSHOW FILMS II: DAMAGED GOODS (1961)/THE HARD ROAD (1970) →

Alfred Eaker's Fringe Cinema

SOMETHING WEIRD TRAVELING ROADSHOW FILMS I: STREET CORNER (1948)/BECAUSE OF EVE (1948)

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Possibly nothing sums up Western hypocrisy more than its attitudes toward sex.  Over twenty years ago, I worked for an unnamed video store chain during the Pee Wee Herman scandal.  Being a family values corporation, we received a memo to remove all Pee Wee videos from the stores immediately.

A  few years later, when O.J.Simpson made the news, our office ordered every video they could get their hands on starring the former football hero.  Recalling the company’s family values policy towards Pee Wee in our next managers’ meeting, I was uncouth enough to say: “Where, in our mindset, is it worse for someone to have allegedly pleasured himself in an adult theater than it is for someone to have allegedly slaughtered two human beings?” After said meeting, my superior issued me a written verbal warning for “inciting negativity” in my comment regarding comparison between  Pee Wee and O.J. I think, for him the most provocative thing was the unsaid agreement, registered through laughter from fellow managers, that my comment generated.

It is, alas, easier for us to laugh at previous generations’ attitudes towards sex than our own. Roadside Show films from yesteryear are now considered archaic camp, while certain unnamed masses rally to show support for contemporary sexual constipation propagated by the likes of Duck Dynasty and Chick-fil-a.

That aside, a compilation of “roadshow” films from the Something Weird video label should certainly provide much needed healing power of laughter for any bad movie night. Bring your own booze and/or bring your own tent (for those in a revival mood).

Street Corner (1948): “The Most vital picture of all time!” “It’s Frank! It’s Fearless! It’s True To Life!” “Lifts The Iron Curtain Of Secrecy, Fear, and Ignorance!”

Instead of going to college, Lois fornicates with Bob. A bun in the oven equals Biblical retribution, in the form of a dead baby daddy.

Lois gets a coat hanger, quickly. Lois’ parents get blamed for not teaching their daughter morals.

Coming attraction: A VD film “Including The Actual Birth Of  A Baby!”

Lobby card from Because of Eve (1948)Because Of Eve (1948) is a hoot, taking no time dragging our couple, Sally and Bob, through the mud of iniquity. When our pair visit Doc West, he is uncouth enough to open the skeleton closets: Sally had popped out a previous, illegitimate rugrat, and Bob had VD!!! Bob’s alarming understatement: “Well, there goes my wedding, right out the door!”

How did Bob get VD?

Cue in explanation and excessively long VD film, complete with footage of infected vaginas and penises, deformed baby corpses, and white VD crosses.

How did Sally have an out of wedlock baby?

Sally narrates melodramatic tragedy in a slinky, silky nightgown. “I began to realize we were in trouble,” she says, which calls for brassy musical accompaniment.

Cue in excessively long film about illegitimate pregnancies, with plenty of animated body fluids.

Because of Eve is the equivalent of a cinematic chastity belt.

Canonically Weird (The List)

170. GLEN OR GLENDA (1953)

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“Some argue that this kind of thing puts Ed Wood into the company of Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí.

Should we buy this argument? Pull the string!”–IMDB Glen or Glenda FAQ

DIRECTED BY:

FEATURING: , Ed Wood, Jr. (as Daniel Davis), Dolores Fuller, Timothy Farrell,

PLOT: A transvestite is found dead, a suicide. Seeking to understand more about this phenomenon, a police inspector visits a psychiatrist who explains transvestism to him using the example of Glen, a heterosexual man who is tormented by the question of whether he should reveal his passion for cross-dressing to his fiancée. Meanwhile, a sinister, omniscient “scientist” (played by Bela Lugosi) occasionally appears to cryptically comment on the action (“pull the string!”)

Still from Glen or Glenda? (1953)
BACKGROUND:

  • Producer George Weiss wanted to make a film to exploit the then-current case of Christine Jorgensen (born George William Jorgensen), one of the first men to have successful sex-reassignment surgery. According to legend, Ed Wood convinced Weiss that he was the right man to direct the picture because he was a transvestite in his private life and understood gender confusion. The resulting film, shot in just four days, ended up being more about transvestism than sex-change surgery.
  • Against Wood’s wishes, Weiss inserted bondage-themed imagery into the dream sequence to give the film a dash more sex.
  • Wood himself plays the transvestite Glen (and Glenda) under the pseudonym Daniel Davis.
  • In his own life, Wood did not take the advice he gave his character in Glen or Glenda to honestly discuss his desire to wear women’s clothes with his betrothed. Wood’s first wife had their marriage annulled in 1955, after Ed surprised her by wearing ladies’ undergarments to their honeymoon.
  • This is the first of three collaborations between Wood and then down-on-his-luck and opiate-addicted Bela Lugosi. Three of Lugosi’s final four credits were Wood films.
  • Some reviews of Glen or Glenda refer to Lugosi’s character as “the Spirit” rather than “the Scientist”; were there two separate sets of credits, each with a different name for the character?
  • Wood’s 1963 novel “Killer in Drag” features a transvestite character named Glen whose alter-ego is named Glenda.

INDELIBLE IMAGE: Such a wealth of possibilities! What about the hairy Satan who inexplicably shows up at Glen and Barbara’s dream wedding? And who can forget Bela Lugosi, yelling nonsense at the viewer while his angry face is superimposed over a herd of stampeding buffalo? The iconic image, however, is Wood’s intended emotional climax: in a ridiculously touching gesture of unconditional acceptance, Glen’s girlfriend Barbara strips off her angora sweater and hands it to the wide-eyed transvestite.

WHAT MAKES IT WEIRD: A narratively-knotted 1950s pro-transvestite pseudo-documentary, told in naively earnest rhetoric via a wandering structure that includes flashbacks inside of flashbacks, would have made for a worthwhile oddity in itself. But throw in Bela Lugosi as a one-man Greek chorus reciting fractured fairy tales, and include a fourteen-minute dream sequence mixing Freudian symbolism, bargain-basement Expressionism, bondage, and a guest appearance by the Devil and you achieve incomparable weirdness, the way only Ed Wood could serve it up—on a bed of angora.


Clip from Glen or Glenda

COMMENTS: Ed Wood had a secret, and it’s not just that he liked the feel of silk panties under his rough trousers. Transvestism, in a way, was the Continue reading 170. GLEN OR GLENDA (1953) →

List Candidates

LIST CANDIDATE: THE TELEPHONE BOOK (1971)

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The Telephone Book has been promoted to the List of the 366 Weirdest Movies ever made. Please make all comments on the official Certified Weird entry.

AKA Hot Number

DIRECTED BY: Nelson Lyon

FEATURING: Sarah Kennedy, Norman Rose

PLOT: An oversexed girl encounters stag film producers, perverts and lesbian seductresses as she searches Manhattan for the obscene phone caller who has stolen her heart.

Still from The Telephone Book (1971)

WHY IT MIGHT MAKE THE LIST: The last twenty minutes. Up until then, The Telephone Book is a mildly absurd pre-hardcore sexploitation comedy with art-scene pretensions; a long confessional monologue from a pig-masked pervert followed by a surreally obscene, obscenely surreal animated climax launch it into a different stratosphere of weirdness.

COMMENTS: The Telephone Book is a sex comedy dirty enough for David F. Friedman but avant-garde enough for . In its seedy black and white universe, subway flashers, lesbian predators, and nymphomaniacs exist alongside surrealism, social satire, and cameos from Warhol superstars Ultra Violet and Ondine. It’s a strange mix but it generally works; there’s enough flesh and vulgar humor for the heavy-breathing crowd, and just enough wit and artistry to give the adventurous arthouse patron an excuse to keep watching. Young Alice lives alone in a room wallpapered with porn, with a giant breast hanging from her ceiling and an American flag as her bedspread. She’s exactly the kind of sexually liberated girl who, according to early 1970s understanding of female sexuality, might be turned on by a dirty phone call; and indeed she is, for she gets a random ring from “John Smith,” the self-proclaimed greatest obscene phone caller in the world. The first part of the movie, which starts strong but soon bogs down in repetitive sex sketches, involves Alice going on an odyssey through the phone book to locate Mr. Smith. The search immediately lands her in a fleshpile with ten other nude lasses at a stag film audition; later exploits bring her in contact with a sleazy psychiatrist who’s both exhibitionist and voyeur and a lesbian pick-up artist who sends Alice into a vibrator-induced trance. The girl’s erotic adventures are interrupted by confessionals from various members of an Obscene Phone Callers Anonymous support group, and by Ondine narrating while a naked man lies on his desk. Skinny Sarah Kennedy is a game nympho with a voice pitched somewhere between Marilyn Monroe and Betty Boop, but although she’s more than cute enough in a girl-next-door way, she doesn’t have the sex goddess quality that would put the movie over-the-top erotically. In the final reels the emphasis shifts from Alice to Smith, the obscene Lothario, who shows up at Alice’s apartment wearing a pig mask to hide his identity. Smith, played by dulcet baritone Norman Rose, sounds like a radio pitchman (Rose was in fact a voiceover artist), and has an interestingly precise erotic delivery (“…now, run your right hand over the previously described area…”) His appearance marks a big shift in the movie, taking it from mildly loopy sexcapades into totally alien erotics. He delivers a long monologue describing the origin of his X-rated calling career, while his porcine face spins in a black void, fetishistically juxtaposed beside various disembodied body parts supplied by Ms. Kennedy. This is all a teasing lead-in to the film’s startling climax; John won’t physically make love to Alice, but they can stand in side by side phone booths and swap dialogue so profoundly filthy that it can only be expressed symbolically with animation that looks like something a thirteen-year old might have doodled in his notebooks after reading a copy of Screw magazine. The film goes to color and we watch a parade dirty pictures consisting of nesting phalluses, a lusty couple with tongues for heads, and a lady/robot hybrid who makes explicit love to a skyscraper. Some things just have to be seen to be believed; that’s The Telephone Book‘s biggest selling point. As a funny movie it doesn’t completely work, nor is it a hit as a sexy movie. As a weird movie, though… well, that’s another matter.

The producers actually shot footage with but it was cut; the unused footage was later lost after the movie flopped and faded into obscurity. Nelson Lyon went on to write for the early years of Saturday Night Live, but his career ended after he was involved in the speedball binge that ended with John Belushi’s fatal overdose.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“…plays like a more explicit variation on Southern and Mason Hoffenberg’s Candy… it’s clear that Lyon also drew inspiration from the surreal dreamscapes in Lewis Carroll’s books.”–Budd Wilkins, Slant Magazine (DVD)