KRIS GILPIN'S Unearthed Works Dept.

 By Kris Gilpin

Crank here (or Erok as people now know me on FB), Here's one of many unearthed works by Mr. Kris Gilpin, originally printed in Wet Paint, a zine by Jeff Smith.

The first time I read anything by Kris was in the Horror Handbook, where he interviewed celebrities. The Lynn Lowry interview when she mentioned how the naked girl from "I Drink Your Blood" pulled out a tiny comb and fluffed up her pubes--is the kind of hilarious antidote you can only expect from such a seasoned professional. We feel privileged and honored that he decided to unveil these works for us and the readers as well, most haven't been seen since they were first published in the early to mid 80's!

    Thanks to Greg Goodsell for finding this rare treat, now sit back and relax, we'll soon be taking a time machine back to when George Romero and Tobe Hooper's projects were looked upon with more anticipation then Meh kind of responses and zombies were popular among underground circles and not in the mainstream (or on baby clothes)! Puke! 

   In the most stupid, wasteful act of booking during the weekend, George Romero (the only real reason I wound up schlepping all the way to the other side of town for the event) was tossed on stage to spend a scant 45 minutes with three other people too: John Russo, Tobe Hopper, and author Gary (The Howling series) Brander, who later signed 75 free copies of his latest book on a first-come, first-served basis. This meant questions were taken on a round-robin basis, with each person only having time to answer a handful each (and they were typical dead-head questions at that). For us Romero fans, it was a shameful waste of a semi-rare opportunity to get into this filmic craftsman's mind a little more. What follows is only the most interesting dialogue from the panel:

Russo, fatigued from flesh eating 

John Russo: "I just finished a year and a half of 10-12 hours a day at the word processor, so I'm all spaced out;
I did a novel called MAKING LIVING THINGS and a non-fiction book called MAKING MOVIES, which is about the whole business from the ground up and how to do everything from making a TV commercial to making your own feature. Interviews with George and Tobe are in the book, along with 10 other directors."

   Scott Holton, the panel's moderator, told all that Hopper's latest project was directing the highest-rated episode of THE EQUALIZER TV show (the one dealing with the homeless). 

Brandner wrote The Howling series, Floater and Cameron's Closet (R.I.P).

GARY BRANDNER [apparently the oldest on the panel]: "I can't say how thrilled I am to be on a panel with men who've been my heroes since I was a small boy [all laugh]. The next thing coming out that I was involved with is a movie called CAMERON'S CLOSET. FLOATER [the Tobe Hooper project] is the dark side of an out-of-body experience; I thought, what if somebody floated around and came back, and their body wasn't there to get into anymore?" (Floater was an abandoned project for Empire Pictures. ed). 

RUSSO: [on the proposed remake of NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD] "Some of the offers we got kind of melted away; I think we might get back on that. I'm going to be writing and directing my novel THE AWAKENING as a movie this summer in Pittsburgh."

   Half the place raised their hands for Romero questions, of course.

ROMERO: ["Anything else in the vein of MARTIN coming up?] "Anything in that vein? [laughs] MARTIN was a very personal film and my favorite of my films. I glad you like it too; thank you [smiles].

OK, Gunnar chew on these Coca Leaves so you don't pass out from exhaustion.

HOOPER: [on more TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE] "The whole Ed Gein thing was in the back of my mind when I made the first film; some of my relatives are from Wisconsin and, when I was a small boy, they used to terrify me with those Ed Gein stories. Leatherface and wearing real-skin masks did not come [from the Gein legends]; that came from the family physician who told me about going to a Halloween party as a pre-med student. He'd skinned a cadaver's face and worn it as a mask. [Crowd murmurs, quite audibly freaked out] I don't know what else to do with Gein; he's dead and gone. I don't know if there'll be a third film or not. There may be. There're aspects of the second film I like better than the first and vice versa. I think the less gore you see the better. Having hired Tom Savini for the FX I had a tendency to want to use him, but I worked myself into a corner with the MPAA, because when we skinned that guy in the sequel there was just no place to cut to, and the removal of that scene wouldn't have made any sense at all".

Shit, I forgot something-- I left my keys in that human skull candy dish

BRANDNER: [I had to change tapes at this point, and can't remember what film he's talking about; sorry folks! What movie is he referring to?] "The general feeling about Carlo Rambaldi's creature was a disappointment; I think the director, Armand [HE KNOWS YOU'RE ALONE] Mastroianni, and the editor did a hell of a job in making the final movie scary but the creature didn't come out really looking the way anybody wanted it to."

 (They mention the lame creature from Cameron's Closet).

RUSSO: "Some of my books have just been submitted for Movies of the Week; we don't know yet whether that'll happen. I wrote and produced the movie MAJORETTES, directed by Bill Hinzman, who was the ghoul in the cemetery in NOTLD; he then went on to make commercials."

Tight bros from waay back when.

ROMERO: [On Dario Argento, Italian horror filmmaker] "I think Dario's work, on these shores, is misunderstood by distributors and, to a great extent, by audiences; you have to be an aficionado to like his stuff. It's very operatic and stylish; I love his stuff!

I think the distributors can't find a way to sell his stuff over here and probably rightly so; I think those films'd have a hard time crossing Middle America and finding an audience. DAWN OF THE DEAD was half-financed by Titanus Films, which was a company Dario brought into the deal; part of that was that Dario had control over certain cuts in the film for the European market, and he had the right to use his own score and I had the right to use as much or as little of that score as I wanted for the English-language version. I liked that music by Goblin, and I used quite a bit of it."

The most half baked out of the 3 picture Cannon deal

HOOPER: [On his three-picture (LIFEFORCE, INVADERS FROM MARS, CHAINSAW 2) deal with Cannon Films]; "Before I'd finish one picture I'd start the next; they all overlapped; when I was cutting one I'd be casting another, etc. And always something'd go wrong in the Cannon [administration]. I was cutting 22 minutes out of LIFEFORCE--it was called SPACE VAMPIRES then, after Colin Wilson's novel--and I got a call from the story editor on INVADERS at Cannon. He said, 'We're having a lot of problems with the script; why do they have to come from Mars? 

I said 'Well, you spent a lot of money securing the remake rights to this title--where do you want them to come from?! I was real sorry I couldn't get that sandpit music 
[from the original]".

BRANDNER [On HOWLING 2, the film] "I was completely bummed out; I did a screenplay for it, none of which shows up in the final version. I think I spent about $12 on special effects and they shot in the dark so no one'd notice. As Joe Dante pointed out they had one terrific shot of Sybil Danning tearing off her bodice and showing her aptitudes; that was really the only good part in an awful movies; if you haven't seen it, don't!

HOWLING 3 I haven't seen; it's the same director as the last one, so I'm anxious to see it. There is a HOWLING 4--I don't know anything about that! They bought the rights to the title; heck, I'll sell 'em that and they can go on and do as many Roman numerals as they want! Somebody asked James W. [THE POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE] Cain, 'Aren't you worried about what [the movies] are doing to your books?' and Cain turned to his bookshelf and said, "They're not doing anything. They're still up there!"

OK, STAY TUNED FOR PART 2, which will be up in a few weeks!  

Red Spell Spells Red

RED SPELL SPELLS RED Directed By Titus Ho Wing-Lam (1983).

by Steve Fenton

By purest coincidence, mere minutes into my initial viewing of RED SPELL SPELLS RED back in the ’90s, I sat down to enjoy a juicy Oriental-flavored Mr. Noodles (“Instant Noodles In A Cup”); probably a BAD idea, as attempting to ingest edibles during these more excessive HK grossathons may easily result in extreme stomach distress.

Use caution, may cause projectile vomiting

An interfering documentary film crew defiles the holy temple of the Red Dwarf Ghost by opening its long-sealed burial container. Later, in a hallucinatory sequence as he views the daily rushes, the documentary’s editor watches his hand ground down to a bloody stump by the rotating metal spool of his splicing console (he is also lassoed and nearly throttled by a length of film which suddenly takes on an unnatural life of its own). A man is paranormally propelled into a river and has his head cracked repeatedly on large pebbles; another is impaled on a tree; another’s arm is severed via machete; a woman is spread-eagled over the lighted wick of an oil lamp by poltergeist influence; suppurating sores spout pus right into the camera’s unflinching jaded eye.

HK's answer to Terry Gilliam's Brazil

On the Mondo front, much-more-genuine atrocities are apparent: suckling pigs graphically have their throats sawed open and are systematically disemboweled while still twitching with diminishing life; an elderly Oriental gentleman geeks a live chicken and suck gizzards like stringy wet noodles from its headless neck-stump.

The Good versus Evil conflagration of RED SPELL SPELLS RED’s latter minutes is a typically-unhinged Hong Kong combination of unabashed cryptic occultism and flashy physical pyrotechnics that manages to be repellently irresistible. If you’ve got the guts – and the stomach for it – by all means check it out: just prepare to be horrified!

I knew I shouldn't have tried to make Italian Kimchi, what was I thinking?

NO LINK

KRIS GILPIN'S IMHO DEPT: HG LEWIS CLOSE-OUT SALE PT. 1

HG Lewis Close-Out Sale! Part 1

By Kris Gilpin

Here are short reviews of several Lewis pix I've finally had the chance to see thanks to Something Weird Video and their sleazy and cheap Dvds (R.I.P Mike Vraney and Dave Friedman).

BOINNG:

The title can be taken two ways, I suppose. It's one of the prettier undies from the early Herschell era, as it's in color. Directed by "Lewis H. Gordon" and produced by "Davis Freeman" (David F. Friedman). The credits offer hand drawn nudes and names typed so small you cant read them (at least on tape). It begins with two silly-acting buddies who, after viewing a double bill of Lucky Pierre and Nature's Playmates (two previous Lewis/Friedman collaborations), decide to shoot a "nudie-cutie" (as Friedman calls them) of their own (the marquee for these nudist films offers a "free tube of suntan lotion" with each admission). One of these guys is Herschell leading man Tom (Blood Feast) Wood, here billed as Sweetwood. Shot in 1963, it was funny for me to see a store sign for S&H Green Stamps, which my family used back in Miami! The two guys drive a vanful of girls to what looks like some pseudo-mansion's front lawn, then film them with a hand-cranked camera as the script acts out a series of unfunny vignettes; of course, the men who paid to see these flicks nearly 30 years ago didn't give a shit about comedic relief, but why does so much soft-core--up to and including teenage Crown International flicks, and even some hard-core--feature embarrassing antics by grown men?

   Is sex and skin that embarrassing for filmmakers to deal with? Anyway, they hire a cameraman for their shoot, and by the end of the film I recognized the face and voice to be that of Herschell himself--or at least in the last two scenes (knowing these films, Lewis probably stepped in for the part with Friedman holding the real camera, after say, the original actor either walked or was fired). 

   There's lots of saxy and horn-y type music on the soundtrack, and one blonde and one brunette have great bodies; there's lots of nice skin on display here, as opposed to say, the tease of Scum of the Earth, but aside from the good epidermal delights on display, the movie gets kinda boring before the buddies finally finish their epic (Nature's Nudnicks). They then screen it for a distributor named Mr. Halitosis--will he buy it from them? What do you think? Worth a cheap purchase, this film is, if you're interested in cinematic 60's skin.

A TASTE OF BLOOD:

I saw this one a long time ago, then lost my notes. Yes, it's two full hours (!), Lewis' longest opus ever, and yes it gets a bit boring after awhile, and no there's very little blood dripping in it. Herschell has his much-publicized cameo with phony hair/mustache in funny "Cockney" (?!) accent. I saw something (a wing perhaps) hanging off of the camera in one early pan in the film. This businessman gets a package (sealed by wax) from his royal ancestors in London. It's two bottles of brandywine addressed to the Master of Corfax ("1888, wow, this should really be smooth)!" (An aside: I saw this at a Herschell fest full of typical older pretentious L.A. art-farts in semi-formal wear! This shitty city has high and low-scum)!

   Anywho, you know what the red stuff really is and after awhile the guy's hooked; this main actor tries but the rest of the cast sucks (for a change--ha ha)! He turns vampiric and the proceedings are melodramatic, with some laughs; he gives his girl the chills when they kiss and there are reams of dialogue. Tom Wood's on hand for his usual good Lewis support. More hokey gaffs as the bloodsucker shies away from the sight of a cross/locket; he also knocks over a pawn on his chess board after taking his third sip of vino, as a howl rings through the night (he laughs, then steps outside to hear it some more). Hilarious shot of a boat in a harbor for London, along with old stock shots. Our Dracula hypnotizes with a shiny light from his ring, then gets staked with a broken pool cue. The pace is slow and it's mostly made up of master shots, with few close-ups and much more story then gore, unfortunately (a definite Lewis liability)! One typically intense moment features the line "There's a flowerpot in the mirror and not you! The only intentional laff is some guys dragging around their "detective dog" ("which way do we go?;" "I don't know, ask the dog)!" The film drags its ass to its Big Ending, a close-up of the family emblem in a coffin: two dogs. Because of this flick's rarity though, it's worth a look of course for HGL' ophiles. Made in Miami.

JUST FOR THE HELL OF IT:

Herschell's "destruction epic". It starts with a long scene of shitty rock filler/music in a club (OK Kris I gotta step in, The band on stage were called The New York Square Library and had incredible garage rock fury-Crank, the editor).

Teenage garage mayhem not dipshit music!

   As we then follow a gang of "long-haired hoodlum youth with a bad 'tude. Mostly a silent movie with dipshit music, we see them light people's newspapers on fire as they're reading them (they don't notice for awhile, just slow I guess). They light paper on fire on a lady's lawn, spray her with a hose (she stands there and takes it; just slow I guess), and drive off as she says, "You damn kinds!"; they bug sweltered straights; toss a cop's helmet in the air; put cigarettes out in people's coffee; trash a ridiculously barren "restaurant" set and burn the owner's hand; bother a blind man; beat up a crippled accident victim; stick a young' un in a garbage can; tear clothes off a line and stomp them, etc. One of these guys is Ray Sager, the youthful Wizard of Gore hisself.

   A song on the soundtrack explains, "They're a bunch o' smelly, hairy apes; nowhere to go but down!" This thing probably scared a few really old, easily frightened farts in its day. The actors take long, dead pauses between dialogue, as they struggle to remember their lines (or wait for direction which never comes); and there's the longest silent montage (of harassment, in this case) which, stunningly, goes on and on forever (interspersed with bizarre, discolored close-ups of the kids laughing) since Larry Buchanan's It's Alive! 

the original Garbage Pail Kid

   There's a cheesy fisticuffs scene where the good guy splits his pants, and transitions are implied by shots of newspaper headlines telling of the gang's terrorisms; there papers are subsequently axed, set bonfire, have blood thrown on them, etc. This film's amusing in its dipshittiness today; it must have cost all of $10 to make. The plotless plot ends with the kids being taken away after they drug four girls at a wild party; they "rape" them (they're wearing their underwear) and rape a girl on the beach, then upset a putt-putt boat in the water. The camera's stiff, with lots of simple master shots and the sound's mostly terrible (when it's there of course). The lighting's often too dark and tinted, too, while we're talkin' bout it. This time, though, it all makes for a movie you can giggle at in its cheesiness. A couple blows up in the climax, after a bike chase and a final painted warning warns, "The end of the story, but not of violence." A brick then sails through a pane of glass.

ILSA : Harem Keeper of the Oil Shieks

Ilsa Harem Keeper of the Oil Sheiks, Starring Dyanne Thorne (1976).

This is the film that turned everything around for me, I expected to be offended, shocked and morally bitch smacked. What I got instead was a laugh riot, as the series continued the Nazi elements which have always been implied, started to fade into the background. In the first movie they are front and center in a totally fetishized manner. This is my favorite of the series, it's so campy and in league with early John Waters, who's always sort of flirted with Manson elements and comical fascism. This is what sustained the series, they got more fun as they went along and Yes!, as you may remember from the first Ilsa, she was murdered at the end. In fact everyone from the original film who died are back, only this time their roles are re-arranged so the audience doesn't get confused (I guess)?

   IMDB and the Cinema Snob claim they softened this sequel to drum up mass appeal, I have to scream Bullshit at that assumption! There's noway that anyone besides degenerate neo-nazis, people wandering into the wrong porn theater, hardcore gore nerds or misanthropes would be able to stomach this Nazisploitation. I've stayed away from this series, that before I caught on Youtube, I thought was the equivalent to stomach churning trash like the Traces of Death series or any other Mondo knockoffs that I avoid like ebola syndrome. So if I was too nervous to watch this, you know any regular theater patron of the mainstream 1970's would not even dare venture into the depths of a dingy grindhouse or swampy drive-in to see this--- not ever. So Fuck whoever started this internet rumor that's given me a pet peeve beyond belief! 

Take these so you don't have a baby

   So what do you do when your gulag is bombed out and you have no place else to conduct diabolical medical experiments, you head out to the Middle East of course!

Suspend that logic incessantly gnawing at your brain stem because many of the busty babes that were decimated in all sorts of ungodly ways are back for more torture! Most of these titanic chested glamazons have worked for Russ Meyer, like Colleen Brennan, Uschi Digard and Haji (R.I.P). 

   Jerry Delony from Slacker and Invitation to Ruin is the sadistically hammy El Sharif. American investors Dr. Kaiser and Commander Adam use "good old diplomacy" to fly in and get some of that sweet black gold. Harem Keeper doesn't waste time with the cruelty or debauchery as three sexy girls with ginormous tits show up in chastity bikini bottoms (with a key hole) and are set aside to be killed slowly later.

Ewww he smells like Hummus and hot garbage

   Ilsa is second banana to the Sharif and is his instrument of creative ultra violence. This time she's constantly accompanied by two sexy black chicks named Velvet and Satin (Tanya Boyd and Marilyn Joi). We get to see what they are made of, as they beat the living shit out of a flabby dude, while both topless and tear his mustache off in a bloody husk!

You're next, Hipster with a wacky ironic stache

   Sometimes Dyanne Thorne's calloused mannerisms remind me of a thicker thighed Dee Reynolds from It's Always Sunny. There's tons of lesbian sex as the Meyer girls, who arrived in giant present boxes from the beginning are put to ball draining work.

   Don't drop your pants just yet, because there's never a moment in this film where something erotic isn't interrupted by something vile and revolting. There's cages of fat women force fed with an industrial feeding tube that has a hand crank attached. Faster Pussycats' Haji is a belly dancing spy who gets some of the cruelest torture inflicted upon her. Ilsa crunches her breasts with a vice and lets some ants feast away until her eyeball dangles out of her skull like a Graham Ingles drawing. Later on, they ram the shit out of her with a hydraulic dildo that blows out her guts! This should shut anyone up who tries to argue with me that this film was toned down or tame.

This is gonna hurt your asshole

   Even though this is a Nazi film, there's hardly a mention of Hitler, but there's something event more ghastly to chew on, most genuine Nazis were accepted in the Middle East and the Israeli-Palestine conflict isn't doing antisemitism any favors. Even if they remade this, the location makes perfect sense. 

   There's no overt political message, but the underlying connotation of oil barons torturing and buying human sex slaves is not all that uncommon. It's a stereotype that's not that farfetched. 

   The level of sleaze and unpleasantness is pretty high, so expect to be offended!

  Dr. Kaiser (who hates sheep eyeballs and later gets fed a human one) and his buddy Adam Scott, the American investors finally arrive. Ilsa goes out of her way to seduce Adam, she gets dressed up like a Christmas ham and even walks two greyhounds at the party to impress him. This is the kind of randomness that really works to this film's advantage and there are some funny moments among the vicious cruelty.

Richard Kennedy would be a perfect guest on 70's Match game

   The Sharif thinks Richard Kennedy is gay and sets him up with a boy sex slave. This comedic talent was also in The Love Butcher, Invasion of the Blood Farmers and Edmonds action classic Bare Knuckles. During some of the sex scenes they use library music from Dawn of the Dead!

   Buck Flower (Back to the Future, Massacre Mafia Style) shows up an a beggar with leprosy who gets to fondle Ilsa's milk cannons. Even she gets tortured for not obeying Jerry the eyeliner dwarf's (or The Sharif's) orders!  

   Ilsa doesn't die this time, she just waits it out in a dungeon until The Tigress of Siberia, which is another great sequel! The series continued on where Jess Franco tried to squeeze a little more cash out with Wanda The Wicked Warden. And to this day, Ilsa-Mania is so popular that Dyanne Thorne sells personalized autographs and conducts weddings with her husband (who played a prisoner in one of the sequels). Check out the link here! 

For just 25 bucks you can get a cheeky photo of Ilsa lathered up like this one from the Tigress in Siberia.

WATCH HERE

OR BUY HERE

The Hypnotic Eye

Hypnotic Eye Directed George Blair, Starring Allison Hayes (1960).

The first time I bought The Hypnotic Eye from Chas Balun, I felt burnt, I mean it had snippets of commercials and was dubbed offa late night tv! To be honest, even though I felt robbed there's noway you could catch it on a late night Creature Feature (or wait patiently for a resurgence in Florida where there were no local horror hosts at the time). I'd have to catch it by coincidence in the dead of night and have a videotape ready, back then there was none of the modern cable aides and technological enhancements that we all take for granted now!  

Mmmmm.... roasted hair

    The version I'm reviewing is the widescreen copy from Warner Archives. The first time I saw the trailer for this film was on "It Came from Hollywood" which was a precursor to MST3K, but instead of Mike and the bots you got John Candy, Cheech and Chong and the cast of SNL. 
   That image of a women washing her head over a burning pilot light stuck with me in an unsettling way and made me wanna plunk down the 20$ to get that rare film from the VHS bootleg catalog. I didn't know what to expect when it arrived, I watched it all alone, just me and a grainy TV copy of an early 60's heavily misogynistic B movie shocker with an evil hypnotist who despises women. Desmond (Jacques Bergerac), the twisted hypnotist's voice sounds like Sasha Baron Cohen in Talladega Nights.

   All over town, women are slicing their faces open with razors, drinking lye and burning their flesh off with acid. The creepy hypnotist is controlling their minds and the poor girls, hallucinate into thinking they're only applying cosmetics or washing their hair.
Most of these ghoulish elements are straight out of an EC horror comic. During 1960 many horror films were breaking boundaries and taking chances like Peeping Tom, Eyes with a Face, Mill of the Stone Women, Circus of Horrors, City of the Dead (Horror Hotel), and of course Psycho.

What do you call a cat eating lemons, sourpuss!

   The extremely sexy Allison Hayes plays the hypnotist's assistant and is the main culprit behind their sick hatred against all women. Desmond looks sort of like Rod Serling.

The writers use psychology and mental suggestion in a brilliantly dark fashion and The Hypnotic Eye has more depth than the usual schlock-fest. It's still kinda square in a hokey William Castle style, but also demented which is a nice combination.

   Later on the H.G. Lewis's Wizard of Gore would take this concept into grisly

uncharted territory in the mid 60s.

   The actual flashing light of the eye reminds me of the hallucination scene in Brain Damage when the light fixture gives off a veiny ocular appearance.

   Desmond takes Dr. Phil Hect's girlfriend, who's trying to solve the mystery to a beatnik club where a Steve Allen looking poet goes on about being a teenage horror movie addict, I think we can all relate here! In Psychotronic they claimed Big Daddy Ed Roth was on bongos, but it's actually Eric "Big Daddy" Nord, another beat generation hipster not the famed Ratfink inventor.

OK for our next number let's kick it up a notch with some powerviolence

   Phil (Guy Prescott) has been tailing them on their mock date to see what horrific acts he will commit on his girlfriend Marcia (played by Marcia Henderson).

   There's some vague lesbianism between Marcia and Alison Hayes as a scalding shower is turned on, or maybe I just wish there was.

Everybody in America wishes this was a lesbian scene

   The second half sort of turns into a mutated women episode of Dragnet as Phil and his buddy question all the female victims of the magician's wraith.

But has he been responsible at all, or is he just a puppet in a faceless women's hateful revenge fantasy committed against all females!

   In a horrifying twist of fate the beautiful Alison Hayes died in 1977 from led poisoning brought on by calcium supplements. I can't say enough good things about The Hypnotic Eye it's un-nerving, creepy and schlocky all at the same time. I am grateful that a company like Warner Archives have so many lost titles like this for public consumption and hate to say it but it's always better when dupes and inferior bootlegs are replaced by the real deal! 


 BUY HERE (Or Get a Warner Archives free trial)

Kris Gilpin IMHO Dept. "A DRIVE-IN BIMBO PREMIERE"

A DRIVE-IN BIMBO PREMIERE

By Kris Gilpin

I'd read about Joe Bob Brigg's Texan drive-in premieres but this was the first such event I was actually able to attend. On the night of Wednesday, May 4th of 1988, with LA rock radio KNAC and Empire's Assault of the Killer Bimbos at Burbank's Pickwick Drive-In. 

  The doors--I mean the gates--opened at 6:30 P.M. and the lot quickly filled to capacity. There were balloons sporting the title of the film tied to each speaker and each patron received a bag containing assorted "Bimbo" goodies: candies, a free pass to a local female Mud & Oil Wrestling show later that night, a Bimbo buck good for one free small popcorn and a drink (signed by Anita Rosenberg, the film's director), an "I'm a Killer Bimbo" button and an Assault of the Killer Bimbos bumper sticker.

Button available Here

   A small stage was set up with microphones just in front of the snack bar; also in the area was a table Empire had set up on which they were selling red Killer Bimbos T-shirts for 5 $ each. On each side of the stage were speakers and in front of the stage were long tables with chairs.

   Empire head Charles Band was buzzing around the crowd, talking to people, and the celebrities had begun to show; Angelyne, Our Lady of Perpetual P.R., was sitting in her trademark pink Corvette, her boobs overflowing her top; and I happily met Barbara (Re-Animator) Crampton (very sweet), who was leaning against her car.

Help somebody get the jaws of life, I'm stuck to this corvette!

   The first order of business happened around 7 o'clock, as a KNAC D.J. hopped on-stage to introduce a trio of young women flown in from New York for the show; they are the group The
I-Dolls and they mimed to playback of two of their tunes (they were probably too nervous--and it was too cold--to really sing). They wore pink two-piece, plastic tops and minis, and danced along with the music (their second number was "Give a Dog a Bone")! Though she called herself "Tippi", I recognized the pretty blonde as actress Tessa Richarde (she had the topless scene shortly into The Last American Virgin).

   Then it was time for the Bimbo Costume Contest as 17 young women lined up, dressed appropriately bimbo-ish, to see who would cop the coveted honor of appearing in the proposed sequel film, Bimbo Barbacue (yes I'm serious). About half of the girls wore something like bandanas tied around their breasts and showed lots of leg (some wore lace stockings with garters). The youngest looked to be about 13; she was not sleazed out and was very shy (her mother must've thrown her up on stage)!

Coming Never to a Drive-In near you!

   The celebrity judges sat at the tables in front of the stage; they included actor Dick (Bewitched) Sargent, sex kitten/photo hound Edy (Beyond the Valley of the Dolls) Williams, Angelyne (who later walked away from her when Edy wanted someone to take a picture of both of them together), comic Jack Carter (who mugged for pictures with Angelyne, pointing to her chest and saying "Look, there's three of em")! The movie's director and two of its "bimbos", the Barbarian Brothers and Connie Stevens, who still looks cute.

That's right I was a Bimbo judge, I wanted to score....with Eddie Deezen!

   The lights were not turned on as the sun went away; the audience cheered and rooted for their favorites, as thin halter tops and gobs of curly hair were everywhere. One woman named Heidi was wearing skin-tight pants with a zipper which ran up the ass; it earned a comment for the D.J.
The winner, however, was a smiley woman in a near-trenchcoat, looking more like a Bimbo Bum. After announcing herself as "The Scum Queen," the crowd was in love. There were three runners up, one of which looked nude and wore a sort of sheer body stocking (the audience went wild over her).

A crew from Entertainment Tonight was taping that night and it was said that Showtime (or come other cable network) was also around. It was finally time for the film to begin.

What do we do now, we've never had sex?

  How was what? Oh, yes, the "film". It was about three women on the lam, falsely accused of murdering their sleazy boss (a go-go club owner); they get bent if anyone calls them "bimbos". The script is purile and the action unfunny (sometimes embarrassingly so); we stayed for Eddie Deezen's cameo (though he may not want me to remind you--never mind), then just drove out (many cars had already left before us), as it had become unwatchable. More dreck from Empire. Oh well; the festivities had been a lot of fun.

   Bimbo Barbecue? I wouldn't think so.

Gore-met Zombie Chef from Hell

-Reviewed by Skunkape-

Directed by Don Swan (1986)

This film received the infamous dog rating or Bow-Wow  in September 1988's Deep Red number 4. This big box title would stick out like a sore thumb among mom and pop video stores everywhere. Then one day this big box would shine in my very own collection of VHS titles. My friend worked at a sub shop/video store and it was going out of business. So we snatched a few titles that you would never be able to purchase at your local Suncoast.(remember that place?) This was a time in my life where I was experiencing all the greats for the first time, classics like Evil Dead, From Beyond, Bad Taste! So needless to say Gore-met Zombie Chef had nothing to offer except a sure way of falling asleep."Hated it."



The Gore-met Chef is named Goza.(Theo Depuay) An immortal priest once part of the righteous brotherhood, kicked out and cursed to eat human flesh for killing the high priest. What a great idea, not, instead of killing Goza the remaining freaks, sorry I mean brothers Azar and Lonzar give Goza a curse in which he has to murder humans and eat them to stay healthy, other wise he gets weak and a nasty skin condition. Not very righteous if you ask me. So what is poor Goza to do? Well, with the help of another defector of the brotherhood named Blozor they open up a beach club and bar called none other than Goza's Beach Club and Bar where all his sauces are kept secret.

The Curse:Putting Goza on the Rag?

Yellow American, Provolone, or Foot Cheese?

So why even review this movie? To be honest it was featured at the Alamo Drafthouse as part of their video vortex series. Did I go? No, it was on a Wednesday, Wednesdays are bad for me but I did watch it again and after fifteen plus years of bashing it  I enjoyed evreything that I once hated about it. The terrible quality of the film, terrible jokes, and terrible effects all made for pure entertainment. Goza will even randomly talk to the audience on occaision like he's fuckin' Ferris Bueller, but the best scene is Goza's big dance number with a few topless chicks and goofy sythesizer music blasting. It's like a skit from Tim and Eric.

"Ladies would you like to do the macarena?"

So, am I reccommending this film to you now? Hell no, but when you've seen everything under the sun, from Return of the Living Dead to Salo and the Gore-met Zombie Chef finds it way to your TV set, it may be a good way to kill an afternoon and it may  even causes you to smirk a few times.

Only a pro like Steve Bissette would figure out this movie is one big Righteous Brothers joke!

3/10 On the CULT-O-METER

See what horrors you'd find in the big box above!

Watch Theater of Guts' Trailer/Music video

Succubare

SUCCUBARE Directed By Wai Yip Starring Carter Wong (1981)

by Steve Fenton

US video ad-line: “A Blockbuster of Bone-Chilling Horror!”

A decidedly grotty Thai/Chinese coproduction from 1980, this is yet another in the spate of films ripping-off the Shaw Bros.’ over-the-top BLACK MAGIC duo. Four beautiful princesses of the “Mao” [sic?] tribe rule a superstitious mountain village near the Northwest Chinese border. Using extract from venomous snakes, these high-maintenance princesses (drama queens, more like!) possess the power to cast magical spells on any male foolish enough to spurn them romantically. Plentiful puff adders, cobras and centipedes slither and scuttle ominously about throughout. The “Ick!” Factor is decidedly high: A man who raises the witch-bitches’ spiteful ire develops a bloated, “pregnant” belly, and when his pasty white stomach is slit open a writhing mass of centipedes and redworms splork out. A Shaolin monk coughs up blood, while another lucky fella vomits assorted species of Annelida (them’s worms). Zombie-like afflicted spell victims become covered with scabs and cankers and writhe in agony…and so would you. A forlorn cow is axed to death and skinned in queasy detail, and a dog is roasted on a spit at a celebratory barbecue. Mmmm-mmm…pass the HP sauce!

Kobayashi I challenge you to a Salamander eating contest!

   The American distributor of this sordid affair laughably tried to pass it off as a “real,” mondo-style documentary along the lines of SHOCKING ASIA, even going so far as a bullshit explanation for the lousy dubbing (“For your better understanding, the producers of this picture have endeavored to replace the native language with English wording”!). Obviously non-authentic, SUCCUBARE does however contain more than its fair share of yucky mondo madness amid much unintentional humor and spastic kung fu. Within the first three seconds, a guy geeks a live, squirming serpent. Later, he chomps on a fat, squishy toad. Later still he bites the head off a white mouse. This mungy-toothed “character” serves absolutely no purpose other than to provide intermittent gross-out value, his scenes interspersed at regular intervals throughout the narrative (such as it is). Thus, only cheap thrill-seeking geekfreaks need apply. Just don’t plan on eating beforehand, during or immediately afterward. You have been warned!

Mao herpes/ Campbell kids disease aint pretty!

   Back in the ’80s, SUCCUBARE used to be available on VHS tape in N. America from the VCR company, duped in crummy LP mode, as I recall. Although copies of this flick are exceedingly hard to come by these days, there is a fully widescreen trailer for it on Volume 3 of the GRINDHOUSE TRAILER CLASSICS series, so by all means grab a copy and check it out.