Pinball Summer

Pinball Summer (Flipper Girls, Pick-up Summer) Directed by George Mihalka, starring Joey McNamara (1980).

Just one year later, this director made My Bloody Valentine, one of my favorite Great White North slashers. What makes that film so enjoyable is how ear assaultively Canadian it is--I mean heavy on the ooots And ooses on words like "house" and "about" plus gratuitous Molsen and Moosehead beer swilling. Since this one (which is also super Canadian) just played at the SF Mission Drafthouse, I figured I'd dial it up on YT and check it out, also I think I heard Hollywood Highs #1 fan Paul "Sharkey", my best pal and Porky's fan fiction aficionado mention it. That dude knows bad teen schlock, he has a degree in Frat-onomics (he even teaches cartooning at Oakland's 3 O' Clock Rock) and I always trust his recommendations. I urge everyone to see it in the theater though, I'd imagine it will be a crowd pleaser.

The only character I sort of liked in a sea of retarded cut off wearing dicks and bra less butt cheek flashing babes is Whimpy (Joey McNamara). This runty virgin has no idea how to dress properly (his belly is always hanging out) and he wears a sailor type hat with a King Crimson button, (brownie points for that shit)! Bert the biker attempts to get him laid while fucking with the main characters. I was dying during one part where Whimp attempts to have sex with a hooker and she gets grossed out by his smelly socks.

you really gotta hear Lark's Tongues in Aspic on meth and screaming yellow zonkers aye?

Speaking of music, the soundtrack is power pop lite puke by Jay Boivin and Germain Gauthier. The one thing this plotless sexploitation flick has going for it is all of the girls are super hot! All the guys led by Greg (Michael Zelniker) and Steve (Carl Marotte), two white dudes with Afros are typical leering potential rapists. I guess Whimpy would be the I Spit On Your Grave Mathew character, but thankfully it never goes beyond light and airy beach party fun. There's a greaser guy named Burt who's busty girlfriend works at a burger joint that everyone is constantly eating at. She was in a few other Canuxploits like The Blue Man, with Karen Black by this same director and even the mainstream Fly remake as Jeff Goldblum's trophy lady for melting a bikers wrist during that famous arm wrestling scene. Bryan Thomas even waxes nostalgia like on the Night Flight site.

Let's reenact that Jodie Foster gang rape scene in The Accused

There's more scenes of people spying and secretly listening while others have sex, smoke dope or hang out at the drive in then in any other film I can think of (maybe it's influenced by the recent Watergate scandal)?

It's never boring even though it's extremely plotless and derivative. There's a stubby jew-froed manager of the arcade named Pete who looks like Cousin Larry and the singer from Air Supply if they mated, the big finale contest offers a trophy and a date with the pinball queen. Man, in the 70's everything seemed to revolve around pinball, check out this pic of Bob Dylan playing the flippers.

It's all about context, if you compare it to Rape Squad (aka Act of Vengeance) where the women being objectified and seen as militant feminists, fight back they're met with disdain, but in this era where dudes can just feel up chicks and as long as they giggle it's total cool--no lawsuits! I know I'm kind of zapping the fun outta this one but it's interesting to see a bad teen sex comedy in this perspective. I like how there's an old timey trench coat flasher who's in almost every scene lurking in the background.

I'll solve that flasher case, right after I polish off this case of Ontario swill

People's lives just revolved around pinball back then and there's even a beauty contest at the arcade ( not a Ms Pacman or Q-Bert machine in sight sadly)! There's a frightening talking clown game named "Arthur" that talks and even reacts when a bikini babe sits on it, I'm fascinated by this weird oddity but it's never explained.

Oddly enough this uber horny machine doesn't make an appearance in tonight's feature

The most surreal part of is the end pinball battle on the featured movie game (which has the cast or characters featured on the machine)! This is like Spaceballs when they're able to see the movie before it's finished. If you're a completist for UP ALL NIGHT style shit and why wouldn't you be, then definitely give this a whirl, it's fun in a totally lecherous creepy way.

WATCH ON YOUTUBE BEFORE IT'S GONE

I hate this Nova Scotia remake of Dawn of the Dead

Satans Sadists

Satan's Sadists (Nightmare Bloodbath) Directed By Al Adamson, starring Bud Cardos (1969).

This was the first Al Adamson flick I'd ever seen period! I've been trying to revisit his work recently and Fandor has fed my addiction. He's just brings that irresistible goofy level of schlock and menace that works well together and everything looks like a hideous Castle Berry Pit beef BBQ drive-in sandwich ad.

Almost makes you wanna puke your guts out

2 mins in, we're treated to an acid soaked gang rape by some of the wackiest looking bikers led by Russ "chocki / David Cross' current father in law" Tamblyn. The bikers all look like they're at a cosplay rally (Mrs. Adamson aka Regina Carol looks like a sweaty, run thru the wringer version of Nancy Sinatra). There's Acid (Greydon Clark, who also wrote the script, he's shitty genius film maker in his own right), here he looks like a fake Lee Hazlewood. It's kind of interesting that a fake singing duo like Hazlewood and Sinatra are in the same movie, they should've put on a trashy Reno tribute act to fund some of the budget! The theme song is a schmaltzy ballad that's "I'll Never Fall in Love" by Tom Jones stolen and reworked with lyrics about killing for Satan! If you're not sold by now that you must immediately track down this flick, there's no hope for you in my mind!

I threw my rancid panties at Tom Jones but he tossed them back!

Acid (or the "Some Velvet Morning" singer clone) reads up on pot while the other hippy dippy creeps gyrate to the sounds of ear torture. Wait a minute-- we've got a second rate celeb in our midst, Lawrence Tierney's brother is present, you might remember him as the cop from Gremlins. They pick up a giant eared drifter who was a former marine played by Adamson regular Gary Kent.

A female waitress/geology student rides around in a sweet dune buggy, in fact it looks almost exactly like the cartoon Speed Buggy!

Hey Speed Buggy make sure you bring us back that money so we can smoke more angel dust

Kent, Tierney and his wife all end up at the roadside stop where she works, don't look now but I smell a biker takeover coming up soon! Obviously they show up with their fugly crew, one character played by Bud Cardos, has a weird Mohawk and the skin complexion of a hotdog! Tamblin wears a big oversized lady hat and granny glasses, he looks almost like a midget or Paul Williams with a colander over his head. His hat is totally over his eyes, I'd imagine him bumping into walls.

The camera does a bunch of Laugh In zoom ins and outs as the dudes stick their tongues out--VERY REBELLIOUS! 

Can I use your bathroom, I ate too many roadside Gorditas.

Eventually they get rapey with these poor girls minding their own business and they all wear Swastikas but seem more like Scooby Doo villains than white supremacists. Back then Bikers just all flirted with fascism it was trendy! The labels on their sad sack jackets look like they're about to peel off. Why do they want to give everyone acid, I guess that's what bikers do?

I'm Van Morrison and Paul William's unwanted love child

Kent doles out the pain on the white trash, starting off with a swirly and cracks open one dude's face. It looks like they poured ketchup on his head that streamed down symmetrically.

It's difficult to make a biker flick interesting and this one runs on fumes, it's very derivative, it's only strong point is the Sadists all look really stupid. No one has any personality and there's no real message (even when Tamblyn goes into a speech about the generation gap it seems false and phoned in). At an hour and change, It's not even that long but it feels like four hours! 

I'm listening to Dino Desi and Billy on this groovy ipod  

We've covered a few bikers films on the site like thee mother of all inept genius road hog flicks The Northville Cemetery Massacre, the tepid Peace Killers is still on the agenda, but this one is too watered down for its own good. They spend at least 40 minutes wandering around the desert, man I'm getting sleepy! Greydon Clark, the guy who plays Acid directed Joysticks, The Bad Bunch and The Uninvited (1988) one of the best killer cat movies practically of all time! One of the most fascinating aspects of the film is that it was shot at the Spahn Ranch while the Manson Family prowled the area, they even watched the production. Tamblyn was also in The Female Bunch, another Manson-sploitaton flick shot there, they were pretty lucky to make it out alive if you ask me.

I thought She Devils on Wheels was dull but this one makes it look like a non stop cavalcade of perversion! I'd rather listen to the worst Standells record than suffer through this one and if you don't get that reference... flake off!

ALL CARICATURES AND NO SUBSTANCE, NEEDS ANGELO ROSSITTO TO BRIGHTEN IT UP!

AVAILABLE ON FANDOR!

The Guernica Tree (1975)

The Guernica Tree. Directed By Fernando Arrabal, Starring Mariangela Melato (1975).

Fernando Arrabal is one of the most insane surrealistic filmmakers out there, he almost upstages Jodorowsky! He really pushes the sacrilegious aspect over the cliff and is one of my new favorite directors. I recommend watching his earlier film "I Will Walk Like A Crazy Horse" first though. 

Maybe I missed an issue of Deep Red that celebrated his career (I'm not sure why he wasn't included), but at any rate he belongs among other controversial figures like Dali, Nagisa Oshima, Pasolini and Dusan Makavejev. Arrabal, along with Roland "Marquis" Topor and Jodorowsky were in a hostile performance art group called The Panic Movement together.
  

In the Guernica Tree we're in the midst of anarchy and rebirth as people of villa Ramiro (a fictional Basque village) have lost their shit in the streets. My only reference before watching this mind blowing, sacrilegious histori-spoitation movie was the Picasso painting "Guernica". The Picasso picture like this piece of artwork was a reaction to Franco Nationalists and Nazis bombing women and children, striking at the core of human civility. If you're Catholic, avoid this film like the plague, it's very confrontational and sickening. It doesn't really count as a Nazisploitation even though there are Third Reich style shenanigans.

some newspaper elmers glue ghost picture you've seen in Italian exploiation films

         
Arrabal at times is like a pornographic Luis Bunel, showing dwarfs having sex or cuming on religious statues all in the name of equality? Ok, sure I'll buy that for a dollar. When you break it all down, it just doesn't gel as much as you organically experience the rampant debauchery and weirdness that unfolds like a rancid intestinal track! That's surrealism for you, it can't really be captured on paper. I swear, one of the naked dwarfs looks suspiciously like Louis Ecclesia, or Shorty from 2019: After The Fall Of New York. The half sized bearded actor Hachemi Marzouk who plays Marvel in Crazy Horse also makes an appearance (and isn't even credited on stupid IMDB).

these new Japanese toilets are sweet!

The metaphors about the Spanish Civil War are all so repulsively in your face, if you hadn't guessed this movie is very confrontational, but also hilarious. Cult Epics put out this disc, they are braver than Criterion who plan to release Guillermo Del Toro's own Spanish Civil War masterpiece.

One disgusting scene shows Goya, a perverted criminal played by Ron Faber shooting his sperm into a glass of Count Cerralbo a fascist aristocrat's wine to express his animosity. Perhaps he's just expressing his affection and just doesn't know it yet. They show a painting Goya (Faber) created of Jesus getting blown on the cross crucified next to Frankenstein! Serious go watch this movie, I didn't believe it myself (maybe I was too wasted)! The actor who plays this anarchist maniac or hero of this film is impossible to identify with. Faber appeared in a brief scene for The Exorcist a few years before and provided one of the demon voices.

This reminds me of a Dead Kennedys album, hmm. . . Plastic Surgery Disasters, right that's it!

The Catholic Franco fascists fight against the pitchfork carrying peasants/populists who're Republican (hard to fathom aye,well unless you count the ultra-retarded Tea baggers). The ugliness against Judeo Christian idolatry is even more repugnant than Ken Russell's film The Devils. I mean people literally piss on Christ statues and dwarfs smear semen on the lips of The Virgin Mary statue, while real children clap, it's total madness. I was kind of shocked at its offensiveness and wonder why the Ken Russell film in still not properly released! 

One burnt weenie sandwich flamed broiled coming up!

The fascist Franco regime wants to keep Spain pure and they show real corpses and people bound to firing squad posts while Nazi soldiers melt captives dicks off using a torch. This movie is beyond unsettling and obviously very political. GUTS readers will appreciate its demented style even if you're confused by the historical elements.  

Yellow Dolphin Man, how long has it been, we need to hang out more 

It's important to see however because it could easily happen again, think about it, a crumbling Republic combined with a narcissistic demagogue rising to power, historical moves like a snake eating its own tale even faster than before with every receiving up to the second info.

is it scrumdiddly-umptious?

Led by Vandale (played by the attractive Lina Wertmuller regular Mariangela Melato), the poor citizens organize and fight back. Goya the Perv (Faber) who's in lust with Vandale, assists in making the people think they're safe, but who in their right mind would trust that creep? She ends up in a bamboo cage and the overly decorated General's slaughter the people and take back control. The poor once again take the brunt, while fascists dominate and get really creative with the frequent death toll, carrying it to an inquisitional level of theatrical cruelty (one midget is strapped to a fake bull as a matador rams colorful spears into his flesh). I discovered this filmmaker through Fandor, I've mentioned them a lot over the years and they consistently deliver the most vital movies out there, for a week I saw everything by Arrabal thanks to them. Check this one out, if you want to see your friend's jaws fall to the floor and whatever you do don't warn them--make it a total ambush experience. Just tell them Oh yeah there's this director who had Spike Lee in one of his movies.

WATCH ON FANDOR

Roots Of Evil

Roots of Evil (The Breeding Of Evil) Directed by and starring Christian Anders (1979).

Skunkape is Deep Roy's #1 fan. He's got the commemorative plates, the racing snail action figure and all so of course when he presented this action-packed flick I knew I was in for a treat. He teases me about having an undying infatuation with Edmund Purdom and now it's my turn to jab him in the breadbasket. 

Now for a second forget about that Indian midget and focus on the Farrah-coiffed chinless martial art stylinz of Christian Anders! He does it all, fights, sings the "balls in a vice" high pitched theme song "it's a Deaaad Ennndd" and acts the shit outta this movie! It's a catchy tune, he also provided the theme for Divine Emanuelle (aka Love Camp) "Love, Love, Love" which sounds like a warped Coke jingle, not too shabby. Just think of him as a nice guy version of Martin Kove's Karate Kid villain, instead of "sweeping the leg" he might sweep the kitchen up.

3 mins in, a group of clownish thugs get schooled (well one of them gets his limp wrist broken). The others suit up and stay awhile just in time for Anders to bust out his tender acting chops and go into a sad story about his sensei's tragic death. 

so high pitched only a dog's ears can hear it

Next, Van Bullock's (Deep Roy) imposing henchmen  Komo (Fernando Bilbao) shows up, he's got a Fu-Manchu long sideburns combo. I feel bad for Komo, who takes some serious abuse from his humiliating boss, he even has to roll out a tiny carpet for his to enter his car from. Roy's voice is very high and squeaky, he's always on the verge of strangling someone like a coked out Indian Donald Duck, he should mellow out and chillax w a nice Clamato or a jazz cigarette! 

I have to take a SHITTT!

The camera angles and goofy sound effects don't do him any favors and play up to the fact that he's a tiny gangster--ok we get it! This insecure twerp is just so put off that Frank Mertens owns a Karate school and he sends his goons over to start shit up! What's his problem anyway, he's got a total Napoleon complex!

The fight choreography is pretty good, Anders (who actually taught in reality) makes yowling noises like an Austrian Bruce Lee. There were tons of Bruce-Sploitations out there, the best poster to that signifies that era to me is Bruce Lee Fights Back From The Grave.

I crushed my balls for nuthin for this Christine audition!

  

Deep's always got a ridiculously tacky 70's outfit on, a drink in hand and never seems to leave his apartment. The same spooky winds and tension you'd see in a Fulci movie show up at the burial ground of Anders karate master. A bunch of Van Bullock's thugs again start a fight and even though they're all armed with Eastern weapons (nunchucks, one dude carries a tiny switchblade) they all get fucked up.

J.C. Pennys catalog circa 74

The film gets pretty repetitive and seems at first geared towards the PG market but stick around because it gets pretty sleazy and ultra violent. Why it's called Roots of Evil is anyone's guess!

The next time you watch The Never Ending Story, just imagine what the audio on the set would sound like with Deep Roy's actual voice yelling angrily at his racing snail!


ROE contains one of the most revolting one man training montages I've ever seen, as Frank Mertens rolls his stomach in leather fetish underpants and does a cock push-up! (I could see Mac from It's Always Sunny using this part as masturbatory material.)

these leather pants really pack in the limburger smegma stink

The pint sized drug lord is always surrounded by phones, his latest devious plan to bring down Frank is to send over Cora a flat faced temptress played by Dunja Rajter. I like how his blonde girlfriend is immediately jealous of her (talk about insecure)! Maybe she's been pining for him for awhile and he's too narcissistic to notice. The blonde is played by Maribel Martin, an actress who's appeared in highly regarded trash like The Blood Spattered Bride and The House That Screamed, she's pretty much wasted here.

this spaghetti shawl really chafes!

Serves Merten right because she plants some booger sugar on him and ditches his ass. Cora is so enamored by Frank that she shoots up and fantasizes about him. As the film chugs along it gets increasingly weirder and more sadistic, my fav part is when this terrible lounge singer who sings like a low pitched Miss Piggy and wears a shawl that looks like spaghetti. The grand finale is a must see event as poor Komo is literally snapped in half and Deep is tossed in a very cold looking brook!
It's very difficult to find this movie, but if you want to see Tim Burton's favorite little guy in action playing a warped drug lord you can't go wrong.

I SAY, I SAY, MORE ACTION THAN ANY FOGHORN LEGHORN NONSEQUITUR YOU CARE TO DREDGE UP! 

SUITABLE FOR FRAMING

ROY Goes DEEP!



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Roots Of Evil

Blood Orgy Of The She-Devils

Blood Orgy Of The She-Devils (Female Plasma Suckers). Directed By T.V. Mikels, starring a bunch of nobodies (1973).

It begins with music that sounds like a Halloween sound FX record crossbred with intercepting Pac man chomps as two sleepy non-hypnotic eyes attempt to put us in a trance or maybe into a coma who knows? If you see Carl Zittrer, punch him in the throat for me! Then toe deep into this pool of garbage juice and sinew, an overly hammy actress who looks like the pretty version of Snow White's hag/wicked queen delivers her amateur off Broadway diatribe. Lila Zaborin, who plays the head she-devil Mara continues on and on throughout the film (she never worked again with obvious reason). 

YOU'RE GETTING A HANKERING FOR SOME DEL TACO, IGNORE YOUR BOWELS

I want to shut it off, but I've committed myself to reviewing this one after seeing it long ago on VHS and it lulling me into an ancient sleep that only an Iced Chai with espresso can revive me from. If you've read the Headpress expose about all the intricate details of Roger Watkins doe foot job/ Manson slaughter fest aka LHODES, then you know that he was on the set of this film because it was his first job out of college, he describes Mikels as an "absolute asshole" with shitty dumb people with no talent and that it was disturbing to him. 

Rocky Horror rape torture extravaganza! 

Bill Bagdad, a long nosed bearded character actor who resembles Michael Landon's sidekick Victor French if he fell off a tree and hit every branch on the way down. He's the main psychic's henchman. It cracks me up because he was also the Sheik from Head (1968) who says "Psst" and is subtitled. The same people from Girl In Gold Boots who I think of as fake Regis Philbin (Tom Pace) and busty Angelina Jolie (Leslie McRae) courtesy of MST3K, show up at a picnic. They materialize at the stormy house of the wicked witches' clubhouse. Mara screams and wails like she's trying to pass a shit brick! She does a monologue of babbling not making one bit of sense and uses magic to croak some dude. I feel like this homeless lady somehow convinced Mikels to write a shitty movie around her monotonous lunacy and he wasn't busy that weekend. 

OK, so here we are several hours later, whom ever wants to get into the cinematic brilliance of T.V. Mikels should avoid this shit all together. I gotta mention though when a Brylcreemer hit man shows up and blows entry wounds into all the horrid cast I almost stood up and applauded like Paul Mooney during Hattie "Mammy" McDaniel's Gone with the Wind speech!

Wait don't go I have so much more dialogue left!

Shit--they don't die, it turns out they're all reincarnated witches or something (I don't think even the filmmaker knows). Maybe if I take a 30 min nap something will actually happen. Regis and Angelina comeback and blab about white magic verse black magic. So far I don't blame my old self for falling asleep, even with all the caffeine on the planet, my brain can't get into this dull as boring shit! Instead of barf bags, they should've handed out smelling salts! 

WATCH THAT EPISODE OF WHAT'S HAPPENING WHERE THEY BOOTLEG A DOOBIE BROS CONCERT INSTEAD! 

nobody would bootleg this bullshit!