100 of the Craziest Films to
Play in 42^nd Street’s Grindhouses

42^nd Street is now a legend. Everything that made that notorious block cool is gone. Only the films, the lifeblood of the grindhouses, survived. Well, at least some of them did. Old-school exhibitors and producers never saw anything beyond releasing the film once, then maybe pairing it with another film a year later. Then the prints were shelved, put in storage, or just plain lost. They never envisioned the explosion of home video.

One guy saw the potential of putting these films on video. Mike Vraney created Something Weird Video, and the rest is history. He saved hundreds of films from being lost forever.  Being that if it weren’t for Mike and Something Weird Video, I dedicate what might be my last work to him. The only other company with a true passion for grindhouse films is Grindhouse Releasing, created by the late Sage Stallone and Bob Murowski.

Change came around 1963 when Jerry Gross released Mondo Cane. That set the stage for the pivotal change in films. Exploitation and ballyhoo became the rule here. Films like Blood Feast, The Flesh Eaters, Fistful of Dollars, The Wild Angels, Olga’s House of Shame, Ilsa She Wolf of the SS, Slaves, Nigger Lover, and other insane films took over the marquees. No internet then, just ballyhoo with radio spots, lurid print ads, and theaters with “fronts” depicting all kinds of forbidden thrills.

For a while, nothing was off limits. Rape incest, child abuse, underage sex, torture, abduction, blood, gore, prostitution, murder, and eventually cannibalism. Porn films, although relatively sedate at first, morphed into more extreme subjects, including rape, torture, pissing, bloodletting, and explosions of every bodily fluid you could think of. From the mid-60s to the mid-80s, it was the Wild West. Then it ended.

Everyone had their own theory, but in the end, it came down to revenue. Simply put, the taxes just weren’t being paid. Some saw that area as prime real estate. There was a push by then-mayor Rudy Giuliani to clean up the area. First to go were the gay theaters and bathhouses. AIDS was rearing its ugly head, and the board of health closed all of these venues. Then the regular porn theaters were targeted. By the beginning of the 90s, 42^nd Street was a boarded-up shadow of itself

Some of these films only ran three days and then were shelved for a tax write-off. Others ran for weeks on end or were constantly brought back and paired with a newer film. It became a standard practice to pair a new film with an older film that exhibitors knew would draw. Bob Murowski showed me a shot of a theater showing Pieces and The Hills Have Eyes. He asked me why it might have been paired with that. Simple answer: everyone knew of The Hills Have Eyes, but no one had heard of Pieces. If Pieces flopped, the other film would send patrons home happy.  According to legend, Blood Feast ran 6 months straight at the Rialto.

So here I am, going to talk about the most extreme, the most out-of-control films ever to play on 42nd Street and surrounding areas. Some you will be familiar with, others you may have never heard of. Some films were mainstream but had a huge influence that their plots were used to make the films we loved.  So buckle up, my friends, as this may be my last ride.

1-Mondo Cane (1962) was released by Jerry Gross’s Times Films. Two Italian filmmakers, Gualtiero Jacopetti and Franco Prosperi, shot footage of weird shit going on around the world. It starts out innocently enough with horny sailors almost falling overboard when they see a bunch of women, female lifeguards performing CPR on willing men, and drunken Germans at a beer garden punching each other out.

Then we dive into the freak show. Chinese death houses, marine life on Bikini Atoll mutated by radiation, victims of shark attacks, and the Cargo Cultists of New Guiania. The film was a big hit, and so was the theme song, More. Gross wanted a sequel, so they cobbled together some more extreme footage for Mondo Cane 2. 

I did see both films on the big screen at a revival house, The Park Theater in Caldwell, New Jersey. I saw Mondo Cane as a kid as it ran on regular TV, Channel 11 ,if I remember correctly. Not too much was cut out. Jacopetti and Prosperi, with Jerry Gross, would be in your face and stay in your face. Jerry hated the MMPA and would fuck with them by not submitting films for ratings and just slap an “R” on the one sheet. Available from Blue Underground.

2-Africa Blood and Guts (1966), aka Africa Addio, this time the boys from Mondo Cane go to Africa. This film is appalling in its unedited 136-minute version. US distributor, Jerry Gross, recut the film, removing the race war politics and making it an entirely different film. It was cut down to 83 minutes. Animal atrocities are horrific. Elephants are killed with machine guns and grenades. Corpses rotting on the side of the road and piles of severed limbs are shown. Mau Mau, mercenaries, and an execution that reportedly the filmmakers manipulated to hold off until they got a better shot are shown. I think they were charged in court over this. But this wouldn’t be the worst thing they had done. Available from Blue Underground.

3-Goodbye Uncle Tom (1971) may have been the most offensive film ever made. Prosperi and Jacopetti decide to go back in time to the slave trade in the colonial United States. They were to film it in Brazil, but when the authorities found out that the makers of Africa Addio were coming to their country, they were denied permission to film. But they found a kindred spirit in Papa Doc in Haiti. Papa Doc gave the filmmakers carte blanche to abuse the population. It is really hard to offend me, but this film did it. Slaves have corks shoved up their asses so they don’t shit all over the boat. Kids are shown feeding on slop in a trough. Twins are painted gold before they are auctioned off.

I can’t see how this film would have run anywhere without the theater being trashed. Supposedly, Cannon distributed this film in 1972, but I’ve yet to see an ad for it, nor do I know anyone who had seen it in a theater. This sort of flatlined the two’s careers. Prosperi did a film about zoo animals that ingested PCP, Wild Beasts (1984). Available from Blue Underground.

4-A Smell of Honey, A Swallow of Brine (1966) – Sharon ( Stacy Walker ) is a hot blonde who yells rape every time she dates somebody. A guy is caught in a car with her and gets two years in prison. She thinks this is funny. She lives with a lesbian , Paula. She dates the new guy at the office, then screams rape after she comes on to him. He quits his job.

She comes on to Paula, then screams she’s a pervert and throws her out. She seduces a new worker, but her putting him off gives him twisted fantasies and he gets shot trying to rape a housewife. Sharon meets a guy in a rock band who , when she goes into her act, beats and rapes her. It ends with her being put out on the street to work.

Written and produced by the legendary David F. Friedman, who does a cameo as a jury foreman. Plenty of nudity for all. Available from Something Weird Video.

5-Brutal Nights (1977) aka Emanuelle in America. Seldom seen cut-down version that removed all the hardcore sex scenes and left in the horrific snuff footage. Reporter Emanuelle is investigating corruption in Washington DC when she discovers snuff film footage. We get a couple of brief snippets before she is flown to a South American prison for a peepshow from hell. Joe D’Amato shot the footage in 16mm, hit it with sandpaper, then blew it up to 35mm.

It is probably the most grotesque footage ever shot. The film was seized by an Italian court as they thought the footage was real. An actress sued for “trauma” but lost the case. Available from Mondo Macabre.

6-Blood and Lace (1977). I had either seen this at a drive-in or it ran at the drive-in that I managed one summer. Melody Patterson (F-Troop), Gloria Graham, Vic Tayback (Alice), and Len Lesser star in this sleazefest. We get a brutal POV hammer murder to open the film. A blonde woman and a man are the victims. The blonde woman is the local “ho,” and Ellie ( Paterson) is her 16-year-old daughter.

Ellie is to be sent to a “home” run by Gloria Graham. She kicks back to a social worker who sends kids there. Escaping kids are killed, then put into a freezer. When the social worker comes to inspect the home, the kids are thawed out and put in a dimly lit infirmary. Police detective Vic is really interested in Ellie, so are others, but they keep saying “she’s only 16.”

Well, a guy with a mask gets involved, and the whole scheme falls apart. Psycho handyman , Tom (Lesser), and the masked guy have it out. The masked guy chases Ellie and Vic. He knows Ellie is the hammer killer and will remain silent about it if she marries him. She agrees ,then he tells her that he was the first guy to bang her mom. This film was only rated PG. An interesting fact is that when Melody auditioned for F-Troop, she never told the producers that she was 15 years old. She got the part due to the professionalism she showed at the audition. Available from Kino Cult.

7-Forced Entry-(1973)-Wrongly classified as an “Avon” film, as director Shaun Costello loudly pointed out. It was distributed by Variety Films, which was owned by Chelly Wilson. This film created the Vietnam Vet on a rampage genre. Harry Reems sans mustache is a returning Vietnam vet working in a rundown gas station in Manhattan. 

When Harry sees cops, in his mind, they are the Viet Cong. He sees people in the street; he sees villagers. Costello uses Vietnam news footage for these scenes, and it works. Harry takes credit card information and uses it to stalk, rape, and kill his victims. He stalks Playboy Playmate , Laura Cannon, home and anally rapes her. “ You got shit on my dick!!” he screams at her before gutting her.

Another victim is killed because after raping her, he decided he didn’t like it. He gets two hippie chics in a van. They are blasted on drugs and laugh at him. He yells at them to stop, but they laugh harder. He puts the gun to his head and pulls the trigger. His thing was inspiring fear in his victims, and the girls were too stoned to be afraid. The film opened with ambulance lights and a shattered head.

The film is a downer. Vietnam vets working in live sex shows reportedly hated it. Harry was so convincing in the role that he wasn’t finding any more work until he changed his look with the mustache. The film vanished . It showed up on eBay. My partner in my DVD line, Mike Raso, had bid on it. We had a gentleman’s agreement not to butt heads on eBay. Thing was, he didn’t know what he had. I told him that this is a lost film and I’d back him up with money to make sure he got it. He did, and no other print has ever surfaced. Available from Alternative Cinema.

8-The Candy Snatchers-(1973)-Using almost the same tagline as Last House on the Left, this is one fucked-up movie. Three scumbags kidnap a schoolgirl , bury her in a wooden crate, and send her stepfather a ransom note. There is a subplot with an abused, autistic boy who has seen the burial but can’t speak. The boy is abused by his mother off camera. You hear the smacking of flesh, but you don’t see it. 

Well, the stepdad doesn’t care because Candy stands to inherit $ 2 million when she is of age. If she dies, his wife gets it, which means he gets it, so kill her. The little boy tries to free Candy, but one of the guys comes back to rape her. When caught, he screams, “Why should she die a virgin?” 

This is some sick shit. They go to the father’s house to rob him. The rapist does Candy’s mom, then kills her. It all goes to shit. The father shoots Jesse , the female member of the group. The surviving thug had promised Candy that he would dig her up.

He goes to do just that. The autistic kid picks up his gun and shoots him twice. You hear his mother screaming for him to come home. He goes home , then you hear a single gunshot. Then the credits roll as it fades out to Candy sobbing. Real bummer of a film, but when it ran on 42^nd Street, you had SRO crowds .

9-The Pick Up-(1969)-this film was lost until a print was found by Something Weird Video with Danish subtitles. Recently, an uncut print was released by Severin Films. Directed and co written by Lee Frost, it’s a film noir, a crime film, and a ‘roughie’ all in one film. Co-writer, Wes Bishop, is one of two guys that have to pick up the weekly take from Charlie ( Dave Friedman) in Las Vegas and then deliver it to Sal ( Bob Cresse) in Los Angeles. On the way back, they see two women whose car broke down. Frankie, the new guy, wants to pick them up. Tony, the older guy, wants to get the money to Sal. Frankie offers them a ride and starts making out with one girl. Frankie begs Tony to call in saying the car broke down.

Tony reluctantly agrees . They go to a cheap motel where the girls pull guns on them and leave them handcuffed. They take the guy’s Caddy back to their car, which starts right up, ad leave with the money. The guys get loose and figure that this was a set-up. They charter a plane to track down the women. When found, the two aren’t cooperating. Beating them doesn’t work. Tony strips a lamp cord and tapes the bare wires to one of the girl’s tits. He zaps her until she tells him that Charlie set this up.

Sal has Charlie hit, but Charlie survives. Tony and Frankie bring the girls and the cash to Sal. Sal listens to the story, but tells the four you’re not walking out of here. Then Charlie shows up shooting. The guys cut Charlie down, then tell Sal they are taking the cash and leaving. Sal calls his boss and tells him what Charlie did and how the cash is gone. Then Sal is offered Charlie’s job, which is what he really wanted all along.

Really good film that will hold your interest right until the end. It was a blast seeing my old mentor, Dave Friedman, acting in a film. Available from Severin Films.

10-Last House on the Left-(1972)-Notorious film that was filmed as a hardcore ‘roughie.” Producers removed the hardcore sex scenes and released it on the exploitation circuit. Director, Wes Craven, started out in NYC lensed porn. Star ,Lucy Grantham, reportedly was a rich girl doing porn as a way to ‘rebel against the establishment.” I had an 8mm loop with her and Shaun Costello screwing.

It was really bad mainstream reviews that sold this film. I was in college at the time, so a bunch of us went to see it at The Little Cinema in the Willowbrook Mall in Wayne, NJ. The co feature was Night of the Living Dead. Oddly, I saw it two more times in two different towns. I saw two different cuts of the movie.

The disembowelment scene was always missing. Now one cut had the chest carving scene gone. The other had the “piss your pants” scene gone. Obviously, exhibitors were cutting scenes out of the film. The film is the stuff legends are made of. The catch phrase “keep repeating to yourself it’s only a movie” has been copied for other films. The film opened the door to a long career for Wes Craven. His next film, The Hills Have Eyes, cemented his reputation as a horror director. Available from Arrow Films.

11-I Drink Your Blood-(1972)-Jerry Gross wanted a horror movie, but without zombies or vampires. Director David Durston recalled a story about rabies infecting some people in Iran. So he wrote a screenplay about hippie Satan worshippers in a semi-abandoned town getting infected with rabies and spreading it.

Horace Bones ( Bashkar) is the leader of the cult. When the local veterinarian’s granddaughter is molested by the group, he goes looking for them. They get the better of him and give him LSD. The grandson shoots a rabid dog. Then he injects the blood into meat pies and gives them to the hippies. Then the fun begins, but not for Jerry Gross. Gross hated the MPAA and would fuck with them. He’d slap an “R” on some of his films without submitting them for a rating.

After booking I Drink Your Blood in roughly 200 theaters, the MPAA slapped it with an X rating. It was too late to edit the film, so Jerry told exhibitors to cut the film to “fit their local standards”. The film was hacked to pieces. Scenes cut included an Asian woman setting herself on fire, a gangbang of one of the hippie women by infected construction workers, and a pregnant woman impaling herself on a branch.

Up until Grindhouse Releasing put out a completely uncut version, all other versions were cut. Gross paired it with an unreleased Del Tenny film, Voodoo Bloodbath, retitled I Eat Your Skin. The tagline was “Two Great Blood Horrors to Rip Your Guts Out.” One of the best double bills of the 70s. Available from Grindhouse Releasing.

12-Slaves-(1969)-I only saw this film because it was double-billed with Night of the Living Dead . I didn’t see Night of the Living Dead in ‘68. So when it came back on the bottom half of a double bill with Slaves, I had to see it. After recently viewing Slaves, I’m wondering how I made it out of the theater alive. “A” list cast of Ossie Davis, Dionne Warwick, Stephen Boyd, and others, the film is both racist and inflammatory. Davis is Luke, an educated slave. But his master is in financial trouble. He owes this slave trader ,Holland( David Huddleson), a lot of money. Holland wants to use the plantation to breed slaves. “Black babies can go for $200 each,” Holland tells him. Not wanting this to happen, Luke is sold to Holland instead. He is put into auction and bought by Captain Mackay ( Boyd). Mackay doesn’t like educated niggas and is going to break Luke. Mackay has Cassy ( Warwick) as his house girl. There is a scene where he’s pretty much raping her as she spits in his face. Mackay proudly tells fellow slave owners that he started bringing in slave from Africa. “If we got 40% of them here alive, we made a profit,” he brags.

One man brings up that Mackay’s slaves have about a four-year life expectancy. Mackay refuses a pregnant slave medical care, saying that God will take care of it. The woman dies, but Mackay says he can sell the baby for $300. Luke is now ready to escape with Cassy, the baby, and another girl bought for ‘breeding”. One slave, Jericho, will start a fire as a diversion. The girls get away, but Luke gets caught. Mackay whips him to death when he won’t tell him where the women went. As the plantation burns, Mackay mutters that he’ll just rebuild it again.

Davis Warwick, Boyd, and others are great in their roles. But this, no matter what it pretends to be, is marketed as pure exploitation. A cut print runs on YouTube, and it never got a VHS or DVD release.

13-Femmes DeSade-(1976)-there was a grind house on 8^th Avenue in NYC that showed some of the more twisted porn films. It was The Cameo. This film is one of the more wild ones. Joey Silvera is released from prison and is picked up by his girlfriend. At the same time, 7-foot-tall and ugly Rocky DeSade is also released. Rocky makes Joey take him with him. Rocky sits in the car and drinks beer while Joey bangs his chic.

Rocky takes a huge piss on camera, then decides he wants a piece of the action. He beats up Joey, who rapes the girl in what amounts to prison sex. Stealing the car, he wanders the streets of San Francisco looking for hookers. A bookstore owner is having an S&M ball by invitation only. Rocky grabs an invite. He picks up hookers and rapes them. One blonde’s cocksucking skills don’t measure up, so he sucks his own cock.

He picks up and robs the bookstore guy’s hooker girlfriend. They decide to set a trap for him at the orgy. And what an orgy it is. A little bit of everything: transgender, femme boys, lesbians, bondage queens, etc. Then Rocky shows up dressed as an executioner. The hookers swarm Rocky, who is too stupid to realize that they are trying him up. They take turns pissing on him, ass-raping him with a dildo, then one shits on his chest.

A nasty film that the only version of is 76 minutes long. The original version was close to 90 minutes. Supposedly, there was a scene with a dog. But that may have been in bad taste. Available from Alpha Blue Archives.

14-Fistful of Dollars-(1964) – Clint Eastwood was in a TV series, Rawhide. Contractually, he couldn’t appear in films shot in America between seasons of that show. But he could appear in films shot outside the USA. So when he was offered the lead in Fistful of Dollars, he figured he could get a vacation in Europe and pocket $ 15K. Odds were that no one would ever see this film. Or so he thought. United Artists picked the film up, Americanized the credits, and had a huge hit with it.

The critics despised the film. The high body count infuriated them. This isn’t Randolph Scott. No, Scott retired when he said that he couldn’t top his role in Sam Peckinpah’s Ride the High Country. Eastwood’s character, now known as “ The Man with No Name,” appealed to the counterculture of the 60s. He was an antihero. Posters of his character adorned the walls of head shops.

Fistful of Dollars was essentially a remake of Kurosawa’s Yojimbo. Eastwood became an international star. A second film, For a Few Dollars More, was a bigger hit. Critics again were appalled as the bad guy, Indio, smoked dope on camera and killed cockroaches. They basically said that these new films were shitting on traditional westerns. Well, “traditional”westerns weren’t drawing any money. 

These films not only drew money, they offered work to overlooked and declining American stars. Lee Van Cleef resurrected his career with these films. Other actors like Gilbert Roland, James Mitchum, Van Heflin, Ernest Borgnine, Woody Strode, Gordon Mitchell, and others found work in these films.

15-Last House on a Dead End Street aka The Funhouse (1973)-This is the one gorehounds seem to salivate over. Shot for 5K by a speed freak, Roger Watkins, this film makes HG Lewis’s Blood Feast look like Citizen Kane in comparison . Basically, it’s this guy fresh out of jail who wants to shoot a “snuff” film.

Urban legend has it in a porn loop where the woman is murdered at the end. So it was a hot topic at the time. This film wasn’t released until about 1977. The director had no idea that it had been released. I must have passed on it because it ran in ads as The Funhouse, and I thought it was the Toby Hooper film that I had already seen.

Seems the selling point of the film is someone fellating a deer hoof. Grotesquely amateur, but for some reason, former Sleazoid Express publisher, Bill Landis, talked about  this film, and that love has been picked up by his disciples. One even wrote a book and used this film as ‘the forbidden midnight movie” or some shit like that. Watkins was a druggie, and so was Landis. 

Watkins was a guest at Cinema Wasteland . After hours, he reportedly dumped a bag of pills on the bar and told fans to help themselves. He also sold the “rights” to Last House on Dead End Street to a group of fans. Watkins spent the rest of his career making porn films in NYC.

16-Sonny Boy (1989) – David Carradine fans probably shit themselves seeing Mr. Kung Fu in drag married to Slue (Paul Smith). Creepy Brad Douif kills some people and steals their car. The problem is that a baby is in the car. Rose ( Carradine) wants to adopt it. So they cut out his tongue, cage, and torture him.

Then they use him to dispose of townsfolk who don’t like this bunch of psychos running their town. Things escalate when the town attacks Slue’s “junkyard”. Slue has a howitzer that he blows up their trucks with. Sidney Lassick is another of Slue’s minions. Finished in 1987, it couldn’t find a distributor. Finally, Trans World Entertainment picked it up in 1989.

The film ran on 42^nd Street maybe 3 days before it was yanked. Fans looking for action got David Carradine in rouge with a 5 O’Clock shadow. Add to that the specter of “Bluto” giving him much butt love, and people just walked out. It was out on a Blu-ray from Shout Factory.

17-Blood Feast-(1963)-The first “splatter” film. HG Lewis and David Friedman were making nudie films. When nudity started popping up in mainstream films, they decided to try gore. Neither man knew what an impact this cheaply made repellant film would have. Legend has it that it ran 6 months straight at The Rialto on 42^nd Street. The hook was the casting of hot Playboy Playmate, Connie Mason.

In 1963, I was maybe 11 years old. I had started looking at the movie section in my local paper. There was a big ad for it. Of course, there was no way that I was going to see this. The closest I got was buying 3 stills of the dead chic on the beach from a dealer that sold comics and stuff mail order.

HG Lewis did two more films with Friedman, then branched out on his own. His last film was The Gore Gore Girls. Then he went into direct marketing. He was rediscovered after being booked as a guest at The Chiller Theatre Convention. He was shocked that anyone even remembered his films. Available from Arrow Films

18-Night of the Living Dead-(1968)-another groundbreaking film that was completely shit on when it came out in 1968. To me, this was the first really “American” horror film. Yeah, we had homegrown product with big bugs, resurrected dinosaurs, vampires, werewolves, etc., but nothing came close to NOTLD.
It was re-released on the bottom half of a double bill with Slaves in 1969. Then it hit the midnight movie circuit. Romero’s “ghouls” were terrifying, and NOTLD unleashed a horde of imitators, some good, but mostly bad. Romero would do two sequels and some other great films. Available from Criterion.

19-Mad Doctor of Blood Island-(1964)-the art of ballyhoo was used to promote this film. Kane V. Lynn was producing WWII films in the Philippines. Distributor, Sam Sherman ,encouraged him to switch to horror films. Mad Doctor is part of the Blood Island Trilogy. Actually, make that four films. First was the B&W Terror is a Man, which was basically The Isle of Dr. Moreau with just one creature.

Brides of Blood brought Beach Party star, John Ashley, into the mix. An atomic mutant rapes and dismembers island girls that are sacrificed to it. It looks like the Michelin Tire Man and grunts like Ron Jeremy. Also featured are flesh-eating trees, blood-sucking moths, and other horrors. John takes out the monster after a girl he likes is chosen for a sacrifice. Plastic wedding rings were handed out to female patrons.

Mad Doctor took it to another level. Doctor Lorca has injected his old friend, Don Ramon, with chloraphil. Ramon has turned into a green, pus-covered monster who rips people to pieces. To promote the film, patrons were given packets of green blood to drink to save them from becoming green-blooded monsters. Unfortunately, it didn’t protect the patrons from getting the shits after they drank it. The film is insanely gory, with severed heads, limbs tossed about, and when Don Ramon gets his cheating wife, he tears her into a pile of raw meat. A fire breaks out at the end, and Don Ramon is presumed dead.

Beast of Blood opens with a guy getting his head split open by an axe-wielding  Don Ramon. Ramon stowed away on the ship. After spitting some heads open, the ship blows up. Ramon is washed up on shore. He heads into the jungle. Foster ( John Ashley) survived and returned to the island. Lorca, missing half his face, has severed Ramon’s head and is keeping it alive in a jar. The head won’t answer Lorca but mutters stuff when Lorca leaves the room.

This one is more action-oriented than the first one. Blood squibs exploded during shootouts. Plus, there was the usual mayhem. Lorca is doing head transplants using the locals. This was around the time of the first heart transplant, so they pushed the head transplant angle with a barrage of radio spots. They also dropped fake $10 bills around Manhattan with the Beast’s face on them. “ $10 worth of thrills, see Beast of Blood” was printed on them.

When Foster attacks Lorca’s compound, the beast gets control of its headless body and attacks Lorca. “Talk to me now ,Lorca,” it yells as it beats Lorca bloody, then drops some machinery on his head. The head in the jar looks on as the place burns.

There was supposed to be a fourth film, Horrors of Blood Island , but Ashley and director Eddie Romero went to work for Corman’s New World Pictures. Sam Sherman had Al Adamson direct the unrelated Brain of Blood to fill that contract for Hemisphere. Available from Severin Films

20-Deep Throat-(1972)-The film that brought hardcore porn into the mainstream. It wasn’t the first XXX film to run on the big screen, but its blend of comedy and hardcore sex scenes made it a must-see in the 70s. Star, Linda Lovelace, became a household name. It was banned and unbanned many times. Director, Gerald Damiano, did a 2^nd film, The Devil in Miss Jones ,which still holds up today.

Linda was left in the dust as promises to her never materialized. She was ripe for The Woman Against Pornography and turned on the business. Years later, Eric Danville wrote The Complete Linda Lovelace. He contacted me about her appearing at the Chiller Theatre Convention. 

She sold out of product the first night. I met her here and was at a couple of shows that we both did. She needed a liver transplant, and doing these shows helped her raise the money for it. Sadly, she died in a car accident a year or so later.

21-Fight for Your Life-(1977)-I’m sure William Sanderson kept this one off his resume. Produced by William Mishkin, the action starts in Manhattan as three escaped cons rob a pimp of his ride by the Lincoln Tunnel. Sanderson is Jesse Kane, a racist white trash, and his compadres are an Asian and a Puerto Rican who Kane refers to as the Chink and the spic, Ling and Chino.

They rob a liquor store and wind up in Morristown, New Jersey, where they terrorize a Black reverend and his family. A racist , hate-filled film featuring multiple rapes, beatings, a child pummeled to death, and the family humiliated. Finally, the family gets revenge. A cop tosses the reverend a revolver, and he shoots Kane in the throat. I saw this under an alternate title, Stayin’ Alive. This was one of the few times that I was scared that I wouldn’t get out of the theater intact. The audience was infuriated. Available from Blue Underground.

22-The Wild Bunch-(1969)-At the film’s premiere, people went out the exits and vomited. Sam Peckinpah wanted to show the horror of real violence on screen. He filmed death scenes and shootouts in slow motion. He packed exploding squids with stage blood and chopped meat. Roundly criticized for the violence, this film changed the course of filmmaking.

Sam’s slow-motion dance of death has been used in films made all over the world. His power as a director was on full display here. Actors were using facial expressions instead of dialogue. William Holden’s cryptic “ Let’s Go” and Warren Oats’ reply “Why Not?” conveyed a sense of doom. Now those lines are on T-shirts.

I saw the film on a Sunday matinee at the Embassy Theater in Orange, NJ. After the film ended, I went to the payphone, called home, and told Mom that I wouldn’t be there for dinner. This is the only film that I saw twice on the same day. Today, the Wild Bunch is considered one of the best films ever made. Available from Warner Brothers.

23-Water Power-(1977)-Called the Gone With the Wind of enema movies, Water Power was directed by Shaun Costello. The distributors put Gerard Damiano’s name on it because of the Deep Throat connection. Jamie Gillis is Burt, who wanders through adult bookstores and sex shops. He sees a woman, underage Long Jeanne Silver ,getting an enema. Now in Burt’s twisted mind, he wants to flush out the bad humors and cock filth out of women. This is Gillis at his batshit best. He stalks women, holds them at gunpoint, and gives them enemas before raping them.

Despite a full-page ad in Screw Magazine, the film was too weird for even 42^nd Street. It was a big hit in Europe, however. Running close to 90 minutes, surviving prints run about an hour. There is a longer print out cobbled together from various sources. I’m surprised none of these boutique Blu-ray companies haven’t put it out with an enema bag slip cover or a small keychain with a turd in Lucite.

24-Alien Contamination (1980)-aka Contamination-Of course the distributors had to put “Alien” in the title to cash in on the other film. A ship sails into an NYC port full of large avocado-like things. These are eggs and when you touch them ,they spurt out green gook which causes people to explode. Although cut to shit, it’s extremely gory.

An astronaut brings back a seed that grows into a cyclops-like creature. It takes over the minds of people. The movie moves from NYC to a coffee plantation in South America. There they find the missing astronaut and plenty of eggs. The cyclops eats a cop. According to the director, a drug cartel financed part of the film. Available uncut , from Blue Underground.

25-Teenage Mother (1967)-Jerry cast his future wife, Arlene Farber, in this, his second film. This one has it all: dope, porn pushers, a bad guy named “Duke,” and birth of a baby footage that Jerry bought for $50. Duke is the resident pusher of dope and porn. His supplier is a creepy guy in cahoots with the weird janitor. Duke has a Reefer Madness reaction when he smokes. He gets high and tries to rape Erika, the new sex ed teacher.

Arlene puts out for Tony, who wants to go to college. She tells him that she is pregnant, but she’s not. The teacher is blamed for morals declining, and the creepy janitor puts dirty pictures in her desk. Arlene gets picked up by Duke and his gang. They go to a drive-in. Girl on a Chain Gang is playing. Duke tried to rape her in front of his gang. Tony beats the shit out of Duke.

Tony makes Arlene admit that she lied. Everything is exposed. The janitor is fired, the teacher keeps her job, and Duke dies from a Marijuna overdose. Is there such a thing? I know I’ve tried, oh well. Shocking for its time, the film did huge business. Available from Dark Force.

26-Barb Wire Dolls-(1976)-Probably one of the grossest, more disgusting WIP films that kept getting brought back as a main or co feature on 42^nd Street. The sets look filthy, as do some of the performers. Jess Franco directs, his muse, Lina Romay . There is a sadist wardeness with a monocle and whip. There are scenes that border on hardcore, beaver shots, female masturbation, and one scene that stands out involves a lit cigarette. The wardeness rims Romay and other perversions.

The big scene is when Romay is strapped to a bed frame and electrocuted. Bedpans are seen under the frame to catch bodily fluids. Then she is doped up by the prison doctor and raped. She escapes and goes to the Governor’s office, but he is in with the warden and doctor. She and another prisoner are shot dead. This was a big hit on the Deuce. Available from MVD or Full Moon Video.

27-Bloody Pit of Horror-(1965)-Released on a double bill with Terror Creatures from the Grave, Mickey Hargitay is the Crimson Executioner. After he rents out his castle for a photo shoot with models, he flips out and becomes the Crimson Executioner. Women are stabbed, burned, have hot tar poured on them, and one is trapped in a spider web with a mechanical spider dripping poison.

Hargitay chews the scenery with each barbaric act. After battling the hero, he falls victim to one of his torture devices. The co feature, Terror Creatures from the Grave, starred Barbra Steele and features a crushed head in the opening scene. Plague victims are brought back to life to avenge a murder. 

There’s a nasty disembowelment and bubbling sores on the faces of the victims. Both films were originally released on VHS by Something Weird Video. Now available from Severin Films.

28-Blood Sucking Freaks-(1976)-Originally released as T.I.T.S. The Incredible Torture Show. The Women Against Pornography went crazy and had it pulled. Joel Reed just changed the title to Blood Sucking Freaks and put it back out. Completely twisted, it featured Sardu, a magician of sorts . Highlights included legs getting cut off, brains sucked out through a straw, amateur dentistry, and a ballerina kicking a critic to death. It was a big hit on the Midnight Show Circuit. Available from Troma.

29-The Defilers-(1965)-Dave Friedman wanted to make the ultimate “roughie.” Dave picked Lee Frost to direct. Dave shot the film in B&W to make it look forbidden,  like an old stag film. The plot has two rich assholes kidnap a girl and take her to a dirty basement . The guys drink, smoke pot, and abuse Jane.

Dave was a master of the tease. He shot a make-out scene where Jane is half naked. The Defilers was paired with The Smell of Honey, the Taste of Brine, and this combo ran on 42^nd Street for 17 weeks straight. Of course, the “roughie” genre escalated violence when they started being shot as hardcore porn films. Available from Something Weird Video.

30-Walking Tall-(1973)-The true story of Tennessee Sheriff Buford Pusser with Joe Don Baker in the lead role. After being beaten and left for dead after exposing a rigged gambling club, Buford runs for sheriff and vows to wipe out these places and moonshiners. Insanely violent, Buford uses a huge club to take out the guys that left him for dead. He survives several murder attempts, but his wife is killed during one. Buford runs down his wife’s killers.

Pusser was alive when the film was made, and he and Joe Don bonded. Pusser went to Hollywood to screen test to play himself but was murdered shortly after. Out of respect, Joe Don refused to appear in the sequel. The film is filled with character actors who become the opposition: Gene Evans, Richard X Slattery, Kenneth Toby, Logan Ramsey, Pepper Martin, and Arch Johnson. The good guys are Noah Berry Jr. and Bruce Glover. Two sequels starred Bo Svenson . These films led to a bunch of southern vigilante films. Available from Shout Factory.

31-Man from Deep River-(1972)-aka Sacrifice aka Deep River Savages. A photographer in Thailand (Ivan Rassinov) has a fight with his girlfriend in a bar. After she leaves, a guy tries to knife him. He kills the guy and then hires a guide to take him up river to escape the law. He dives into the river, but when he surfaces, his guide is dead with an arrow in his throat.

A tribe of savages captures the photographer. Thinking he is part fish, they use him to catch fish and turtles. He sees a lot of horrible shit, tongues getting cut out, hands getting cut off. But the Chief’s daughter ( Me Me Lai) becomes interested in him. He escapes, but is cornered and fights a warrior for his life. He kills the warrior, then is put through a sadistic ritual where he is tied to a rotating post and darts are shot into him.

He is accepted into the tribe, but the witch doctor isn’t happy and poisons his bride. A young couple is attacked by cannibals. The guy is mortally wounded and goes for help. The girl is gang-raped, killed, and eaten. The tribe sows up and kills the cannibals. Another tribe attacks, and the witch doctor is killed. The daughter dies, but gets the photographer to stay with the tribe.

This was the first entry in the Italian cannibal film cycle. Umberto Lenzi directed it. They couldn’t get an actress to play the girl being eaten, so they hired a local prostitute. Grim and disturbing, it was a harbinger of things to come. Ivan Rassinov and Me Me Lai would continue to appear in these films. Available from Kino Lorber

32-Payment in Blood-(1967)-A brutal spaghetti western with Guy Madison as an insane Confederate officer still fighting the Civil War. Ed Byrnes is a bounty hunter looking to infiltrate the group. Cornel Blake’s inner circle is like a reverse Magnificent Seven, killers that use spurs, knives, whips, and fists to kill their victims. They raid small towns, wiping everyone out.
 Burns claims to know where stolen gold is. He sets a trap, but the outlaws wait on the roofs and ambush the posse. A huge body count is achieved as the seven killers almost wipe out an entire town. Burns kills Blake’s men, and the surviving townsfolk rip Blake apart. Enzo Castellari directed this film, which was also known as Seven Winchesters for a Massacre and Blake’s Marauders.

33-Legend of Nigger Charley-(1972)-Fred Williamson’s first lead role after being in MASH. Charley is a slave that was given papers freeing him by a plantation owner. When the owner dies, the slaver ,John Ryan, rips up the papers and has Charley beaten. Charley and two others, Don Pedro Colley and Durvill Martin, escape after Charley bests the slaver to death.

They go to a town to hide out, but the sheriff tells them that slavers are after them. They refuse to keep running. The sheriff is gunned down by the slavers. Charley and the boys battle it out with the slavers and kill them all. They keep on riding and pick up a kid who is a good shot and an old man who claims he’s a Blackfoot Indian.

A farmer wants to hire them for protection. He is being extorted by a crazy preacher ( Joe Santos). Three of the preacher’s men come to the farm. One rides back to tell the preacher to stay away. The preacher attacks with all his guns. The kid, the old man, and Don Pedro get killed. Charley kills the preacher, who takes a crazy bump to the ground.

The film was a huge hit. A sequel, Soul of Nigger Charley , came next. Fred Williamson made his own sequel, Boss Nigger. Distributors went nuts to get these titles on a marquee. The “N” word drew huge money back in the day. Fred defended the titles, saying, “You know anyone who called me that word usually ended up dead.” “I created Boss Nigger because I knew it would draw money.” Different times, as this would never fly today. Boss Nigger is available from VCI Entertainment. Both Charley films are in a limited box set from Imprint Films.

34-A Climax of Blue Power-(1974)- Night watchman, Eddie, wants to be a cop in this Lee Frost-directed roughie. He makes his car look like a police car and dresses in an LAPD uniform as he “arrests” and rapes prostitutes. He inadvertently comes across what might be a murder. He uses what he knows to intimidate the murderess. Eventually, this all unravels as the real cops get wind of what he is doing.

Eddie gets into a chase that ends in a gunfight with the real cops. Eddie is gunned down. This film is more polished than other roughies made at the time. Frost excelled at these kinds of films. Available from Alpha Blue Archives.

35-The Taming of Rebecca-(1982)-back story here was that live sex show performer, Phil Prince, found out that Avon Films paid Carter Stevens $5K to make a film. Phil convinced them that he could do one a lot cheaper. So, using an underage Sharon Mitchell, who is raped by her father on a toilet in the opening scene.

Rebecca is sent to a school for sexually abused children. The Dean of Discipline is an overly psychotic George Pain. There is a place called “the cave” where the dean takes girls who never return. The “kids” experiment with each other. They get caught. Velvet Summers has a safety pin shoved through her nipple. There is an explosion of blood and piss. The girls are taken to the cave. The Dean rapes one girl on a dirty floor. It ends when the Dean’s secretary shoots him in the head.

This film drew the ire of the anti porn Meese Commission. It didn’t help that a tape of this film was found in a serial killer’s VCR cued up to the nipple-piecing scene. Prince would direct a couple of more films with more rape and violence. Available from After Hours Cinema

36-Women’s Prison Massacre-(1983)- Laura Gemser is Emmanuelle , a woman who is reported locked up for political reasons. She also has a hit put out on her. Nasty inmate, Albina, tries to collect on it and winds up getting stabbed instead. Then a trio of cons are brought to the prison. Crazyboy Henderson ( Gabriel Tinti) leads an escape when the men beat, rape, and kill guards and women.

This gets really nasty. Highlights include a woman putting a razor blade on a cork, then putting it in her hooha. One rapist gets his dick cut in half. There’s a Russian roulette scene where brains splatter in someone’s face. An aborted escape with the warden ends it. The warden is killed along with Crazyboy, and Emmanuelle goes back to jail.

This one really delivered on the sex and violence. It ran at the Liberty for a couple of weeks and was brought back as a co feature. Bruno Mattei was the director. I wrote the liner notes for the Alternative Cinema DVD release. Shout Factory put out the Blu-ray.

37-Eaten Alive-(1980) aka Doomed to Die aka Eaten Alive by Cannibals-Another import that they got a lot of mileage out of. Ivan Rassinov is a Jim Jones-like cultist having his compound in cannibal country. He seduced an heiress, and her sister hires adventurer, Robert Kerman, to rescue her.
 Scenes were lifted from Ruggerio D’Aodoto’s Last Cannibal World. Me Me Li costars and her death scene was lifted from that film. A cheesy effect shows the people actually being eaten alive. Italian porn star, Paola Senatore, is one of the victims. Some scenes are a little unnerving . Umberto Lenzi directed. Available from Severin Films.

38-Satan’s Sadists-(1969)-This is the film that put Independent International on the map. Called a “Rebellion of Human Garbage” and the skuzziest biker film ever made. Russ Tamblyn is Anchor, leader of the Satans. He claimed doing this film ruined his career. What career? Other members of the gang are Bud Cardos, Greydon Clarke, Robert Dix, William Bonner, and Bobby Clark. Gary Kent is Johnny ,the hero.

The Satan’s terrorize a diner and kill guest victims Scott Brady and Kent Taylor. Johnny and a waitress run into the desert to escape. Regina Carroll is Gina, a biker mama. Lots of rapes and killing. Tamblyn is really over the top. Johnny kills off the bikers one by one. Rattlesnakes and a toilet become weapons. Gary and Bud Cardos have an epic fight. In real life, they were close friends. Johnny and Anchor face off at the end. Johnny kills Anchor.

They tried a sequel, but even though footage was shot, it was used to pad out another film, Dracula vs. Frankenstein. It was released on VHS by Super Video. It can be had on a Blu-ray from Severin Films.

39-Make Them Die Slowly-(1981)-aka Cannibal Ferox. The most enduring title ever slapped on a 42^nd Street marquee. Sadly, propathetic, as the area was actually slowly dying. A rape was advertised on the poster, but it never happened. This was Unberto Lenzi’s answer to Deodato’s Cannibal Holocaust. It ran for 10 weeks straight at The Liberty Theater on 42^nd Street. Then it was brought back for another three weeks.

The selling points of the film were Zora Kerova getting hooks shoved through her tits and hung up. Then Giovanni Radice gets his cock cut off. Disembowelments, brain eating, animal cruelty, and rampant cocaine abuse. Viewers could identify with Mike’s cocaine abuse as coke use was insane back then.
Outside of the theater, a small TV ran the trailer non-stop. The plywood front was like a mini museum of atrocities. Aquarius Releasing put it out, and ballyhoo sold it. Available from Grindhouse Releasing.

40-The Last Cannibal World-(1977)- aka Cannibal, aka Jungle Holocaust, aka The Last Survivor, aka Carnivorous. Well, they certainly got a lot of mileage out of this one. A small plane carrying four passengers is looking for scientists left in a camp for oil exploration. Landing, they find the camp deserted. Signs of some struggle leave bloodstains on tents and equipment.
 The plane lost a wheel in landing, so Harper (Massimo Foshi), Rolf (Ivan Rassinov), Charlie , & Swan sleep in the plane. Swan has to pee, so she goes out and is grabbed by something. The three look for her as dawn breaks. They find a barbecue from hell. Cannibals are eating Swan. Charlie gets killed by a ball of spikes. Rolf and Harper are separated. Harper is captured by the cannibals.

Harper is tortured, then put in a cage with two large birds. He also gets a hand job from a native girl(Me Me Lai). So we get animal cruelty, a baby tossed to crocodiles, heads bashed in , and Me Me Lai is split open and eaten. I have written about this film here and in other publications. This is one brutal film and kept getting brought back to 42^nd Street under multiple titles. Directors Ruggerio Deodato and Umberto Lenzi seemed to be trying to outdo each other. This was available from Code Red.

41-Sweet Sweetback’s Bad Assed Song-(1971)- Melvin Van Peebles took the money he made from Watermelon Man and made the first “blaxploitation” film. He got a $50K loan from Bill Cosby, but no distributor would touch it. Sweetbacks is set up for a murder and given to two white cops. He kills them, then goes on the run. Now he has to run to Mexico to escape the law. 

Peebles went to Jerry Gross, whose company, Cinemation, was near bankruptcy. Both men agreed that to promote this movie, it had to be kept in your face and stay in your face. Word of mouth and ballyhoo sold it as newspapers were loath to accept advertising for it. “ Rated X By An All White Jury”, “You Bled My Mama, You Bled My Papa, But You Won’t Bleed Me”. The film that the MAN Doesn’t Want You To See. “ It became a huge hit and set the bar for blaxploitation films.

42-Raw Force-(1982) -This could be the ultimate exploitation film. Warrior Island is where disgraced martial artists are buried. A sect of cannibalistic monks led by Vic Diaz can raise them from the dead. They trade jade to a Hitler lookalike for captured prostitutes that they barbecue. 

A cruise ship headed to the island is attacked by the Hitler guy’s minions. They wind up as “guests” of the monks and have to fight kung fu zombies to get off the island. Blood, kung fu, hookers, insane shootouts, piranhas, ample nudity, and Cameron Mitchell. How could you go wrong?

43-Touch of Her Flesh-(1967)-Obviously made for the raincoat crowd, plenty of exposed breasts and sleazy 60’s type lingerie are the draw here. Directed by Michael Findley, he also stars as Richard Jennings. After seeing his wife fucking another man, Jennings runs out into traffic and is run over. Now he’s a one-eyed cripple who hates all women.

He stalks and kills Go-Go dancers and hookers. He also mumbles a bunch of psycho babble before he goes on the rampage. He cuts his wife’s head off with a buzz saw. This film may have been one of the first stalk and slash films. It spawned two sequels of escalating violence. Available from Something Weird Video.

44-The Big Gundown-(1967)-This film was shot after Lee Van Cleef returned to acting in For a Few Dollars More. Columbia released it after The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly was a huge hit. Lee Van Cleef’s name became a fixture on grind house marquees. In this film, he is a lawman after a Mexican rapist and killer, or was he? Tomas Milian is Cuchillo, and he was set up by a rancher to take the fall for his son’s crime. Plenty of violence even though the film was cut down for US release.

Like Eastwood, Bronson, and Reynolds, Van Cleef was a former bit player like these guys but was the better actor. Plus, he transcended genres. He co starred with Jim Brown in El Condor, Take a Hard Ride, and Kid Vengeance. He mixed westerns with martial arts with Blood Money, aka The Stranger and the Gunfighter. His name on the marquee with Death Rides a Horse, Day of Anger , Sabata, and others drew SRO crowds. The Big Gundown is available ,uncut, from Grindhouse Releasing.

45-Cannibal Holocaust-(1980)-Yes, this is the mother of all cannibal movies and the most extreme. Released after Make Them Die Slowly, it ran two weeks at the Harris Theater. People have said that it was brought back a lot, but it wasn’t. Were Make Them Die Slowly over the top, Holocaust was just too grim. I was going to see it at a theater in Jersey, but it got pulled after two days due to complaints about the animal cruelty. So I went to the Harris.
 The usually rowdy crowd was pummeled into submission by this film. I heard someone retching in the back of the theater. Some woman was crying loudly during the climax. People actually thought they were seeing something real. Grainy bootlegs were sold at conventions. The film opened in Japan the same week as ET did. The film outdrew ET.

The film vanished for quite some time. It was out on a Japanese Laser Disc with the nudity cropped. Our friends at Grindhouse Releasing completely restored the film and road-showed it across the country. Sadistic, controversial, extreme, and gory, it’s a classic piece of exploitation and it’s a must-see for exploitation fans. Available from Grindhouse Releasing.

46-The Death Collector -(1976)-released during our Bi Centenial, this mob movie featured the film debuts of Joe Pesci and Frank Vincent. A local collector for the mob wants to branch out a bit. He and some friends rob the take from a local supermarket. Things turn to shit when his boss finds out. 

This was shot almost in my backyard as I lived in the area. Hasbrook Heights and the Meadowlands were prominently featured. I was a mechanic back then; the climax was filmed at Sar’s Auto Wreckers, a place I did business with. The hit men were local wise guys. One was actually taken out in a mob hit. The ending is hard to watch as the guy is shot to pieces and dumped in a ditch. Aka The Enforcer or Family Enforcer. It is in the cue for the Blu-ray treatment from Grindhouse Releasing.

47-Five Fingers of Death-(1972)-this is the film that started the martial arts craze in the early 70s. Student Lo Lieh trains under a new master so he can win a martial arts tournament. He needs to win so the local thugs can’t retain their power. Plenty of action with a heart getting ripped out in the climatic battle.

This film was hugely popular and ran for weeks. Other films were imported, but this was the first one. Lo Lieh would team with Spaghetti Western star Lee Van Cleef for Blood Money, aka The Stranger and the Gunfighter. This was the first merging of the two genres.

48-Ilsa She Wolf of the SS-(1975)-Produced by Dave Friedman as “Herman Traeger’, this one really shocked the jaded patrons of “the Deuce”. Debuting at The Apollo, what other films promised, Ilsa delivered in spades. Torture, castration, bondage, sadism, fem domination, and more. It was shot on abandoned sets from the TV show, Hogan’s Heroes.

Don Edmunds directed, Dyanne Thorne is the star. Both said in an interview that they were the only two people in the film that were naïve enough to use their real names. Others in the film were George “Buck” Flower and porn queens Ushi Digart, Collen Brennan, and Sandy Dempsy. The film was roundly condemned but drew SRO crowds.

Make no mistake about it, word of mouth sold this film. As far as blood, gore, and unrelenting sadism, this film couldn’t be topped. Joe Blasco was the first guy to do these splatter effects. Here a cut throat looks like a cut throat. The film was Canadian-backed and was shown in 17 countries before it ran here. Friedman had his name taken off the picture as a “fuck you” to the Canadian backers who kept stalling on payments.

Over 30 years later, Ilsa can still flatline viewers. Friedman refused to participate in the sequel, so the Canadians went to director Don Edmunds. Edmunds told them, “ You do realize we killed her, right?” They said no one would remember, so Ilsa was brought back. The sequel, Ilsa Harem Keeper of the Oil Sheiks, was paired with the first film again, at the Apollo. That film is not as over the top as the first one. Supposedly, Kino Lober is putting the films out on Blu-ray.

49-The Flesh Eaters-(1964)-A nasty little monster movie that featured tiny sea creatures stripping the flesh from victims. Martin Kosleck is a German scientist doing research on a deserted island. A charter plane emergency lands there to ride out a storm. The pilot and passengers, an actress and her secretary, spend the night.

The scientist lets the plane float out to sea, stranding the passengers. A bunch of deteriorating canisters from WWII had released this German bio-weapon, the flesh eaters. The scientist wants to capture them and sell them as a weapon. Most of the small cast is eaten in horrible scenes. The effects of the creatures eating through people were groundbreaking and shocking. 

A great jazz score and having Radley Metzger as the editor elevated this gruesome little shocker.

Southern distributor,Mike Ripps, shot Nazi concentration camp atrocities to make the film more “marketable” to Southern drive-in patrons. The film got the full cover treatment from famous Monsters of Filmland. TV stations were warned not to pick this film or Blood Feast up for broadcast TV. Horribly edited prints flooded the VHS market. Dark Sky put it out on DVD, and Shout Factory did a limited Blu-ray. This film had a huge influence on future gore films. 

50-Poor White Trash-(1957)- Southern distributor, Mike Ripps, took an unreleased film, Bayou, added some sleazy scenes, and marketed it as Poor White Trash. He paired it with a Corman film that bombed, The Intruder. He changed the title on that to I Hate Your Guts. This double bill ran on the Southern drive-in circuit for decades.

Poor White Trash is insane. Peter Graves stars as a Northerner in the bayou on business. He falls for a hot Cajun beauty, but Timothy Carey wants her. Carey is the one to watch, especially his “Cajun Love Dance.” Then Graves and Carey battle to the death over the girl. As far as I know, this only got a VHS release. It’s now on YouTube.

51-Humaniods from the Deep-(1980)- extremely gory monster mash of sea creatures mating with human women. Doug McClure is the hero, Vic Morrow is a racist, and the director claimed that Roger Corman put the gore scenes in without her knowledge. Rob Bottin did the gore effects. The monsters attack a carnival and it gets bloody. Of course, there is the birth of a monster baby at the end that was ripped off Alien. One of the better New World releases.

The movie bears a similarity to another sea monster movie from 1964, Horror of Party Beach. Mutated sea monsters carry off girls to do who knows what to them. It was a big hit in the 60s. Available from Shout Factory.

52-Zombie-(1979)-To cash in on Dawn of the Dead, Jerry Gross imported the first Fulci film to reach our shores, Zombi 2. Dawn of the Dead was called Zombi in Italy. The tagline was “If you loved Dawn of the Dead, You’ll Just Eat Up Zombie” or “We Are Coming to Eat You.”
Zombie one sheets were plastered on any surface that was available in New York City. TV and radio spots were relentless in pushing the film. The violence was more extreme than Dawn of the Dead. A zombie trying to eat a shark was a highlight. Heads explode, throats are ripped out, and a three-foot splinter goes through an eyeball. Richard Johnson, Ian McCulloch, Tisa Farrow, and Al Cliver star. Richard Johnson proudly told me that Zombie is always playing in some part of the world. Available from Blue Underground

53-Little Cigars AKA The Little Cigar Mob-(1973)- Insane film with a blonde grifter ( Angel Thompkins) teaming up with a group of midget pickpockets. She has a sit-down with them after they rob her. She has plans for bigger heists. The gang is Billy Curtis, Felix Silla, Jerry Marin, and Frank Delfino. Even Angelo Rossito shows up.

The heists get bigger. Slick( Curtis) has a tryst with Angel. When she blows him off, he follows her to a bar and kicks the shit out of the cowboy that she’s drinking with. Big double cross at the end. DVD is no longer in print.

54-The Wild Angels-(1966)-The Hells Angels Motorcycle Club was all over the news back then. Plus, Hunter S. Thompson had written a book about them. So, Roger Corman saw dollar signs and shot The Wild Angels with Peter Fonda, Nancy Sinatra , Bruce Dern, Michael J. Pollard, and Corman regulars, Dick Miller, Bruno Vesota, and Barboura Morris.

Fonda is Heavenly Blues, the gang leader. We have fights with a Mexican gang. Cops chase Loser (Dern) until he crashes. The gang “liberates” him from the hospital. We get a biker funeral where the widow is raped. 

The film did big business and launched the biker movie genre. The Angels sued Corman for defamation of character and put a hit out on him. Corman told them if he was hit, there would be no money forthcoming from the suit. We aren’t dealing with any rocket scientists here. Fonda had a better role in the cult classic, Easy Rider.

55-Caligula-(1979)-Big budget Penthouse release with name stars is nothing more than a huge sleazefest that ran for months at The Liberty Theater on 42^nd Street. Ultraviolent and filled with scenes of perversion, this was a huge hit. Most of the actors disowned it as they claimed the sex scenes were added after the film was completed.

The film has attained legendary status and was a frequent replay on The Deuce.

56-Trap Them and Kill Them-(1977)-aka Emmanuelle and the Last Cannibals. Joe D’Amato cannibal film dispenses with the animal cruelty and gives us some nearly hardcore sex scenes instead. A girl found wandering the Amazon has a tattoo of a cannibal tribe on her. She bites the tit off a nurse. Emmanuelle is a reporter. Gabriel Tinti is an anthropologist. They mount an expedition into the jungle with a nun and a young girl. The nun wanders off and is grabbed by the cannibals and eaten.

They run into a couple who are on “safari”, the McKenzies, Donald is Donald O’Brien aka Dr Butcher himself. The couple are actually looking for stolen diamonds. Mr. McKenzie gets “serviced “ by the black guide in a nearly hardcore scene. The McKenzies and the girl are captured by cannibals. Mrs. McKenzie is gutted from breast to crouch. Donald is cut in half in a cheap, optical effect. A diversion with fireworks frees the girl. Available from Severin Films.

57-Love Camp # 7-(1968)-Dave Friedman wanted to do a concentration camp movie around the same time he and HG Lewis shot Blood Feast. Lewis, however, decided against it. So in 1968, Friedman, along with Bob Cresse, Wes Bishop, and Lee Frost, created the first real “Naziploitation” film, Love Camp # 7. Cresse and Bishop wrote the screenplay. Friedman produced it and does a cameo as a Nazi officer. Cresse, who collected Nazi memorabilia, plays the Commandant with a great deal of sadism. Lee Frost, who had a flair for directing “roughies,” was the director.

Two undercover agents get captured to get information from a prisoner. The camp is a forced brothel as prisoners are made to service German officers. Unfit women are gassed. At times, the dialog is sleazier than the action. Graphic descriptions of the experiments, torturing Jews, and other subjects are high on the cringe factor.

The Commandant plans an orgy. That goes south when a sadistic officer gets a corkscrew in the throat. The prisoners get some guns, and the slaughter starts. The Commandant’s face is shredded with a broken bottle. Bodies stack up, and only one agent survives. This is pretty polished for an exploitation film. It bounced around the Deuce for years. Available from Blue Underground.

58-El Condor-(1970)- One of the first mainstream films to get the “R” rating for nudity and violence. The first teaming of Blaxploitation starJim Brown and Spaghetti western star Lee Van Cleef was box office gold. Van Cleef plays against type as Jaroo, a crazy desert rat looking for gold. Brown is Luke, who just escaped from a prison and wants to loot a fort called El Condor full of gold bars.

They team up because Luke needs an army and Jaroo knows an Apache tribe. Iron Eyes Cody is Santana. Patrick O’Neal is Chavez, the Captain . Elisha Cook Jr is an old convict. Marianna Hill is there for full frontal nudity. Larry Cohen wrote the script which was based on the huge fort that was built. That fort was also in Conan the Barbarian and A Reason to Live, A Reason to Die.

Back story, according to Larry Cohen, was that Van Cleef refused to do the film. He told Cohen he was tired of the same roles. Cohen told him, “ Lee, this is a comedy.” “Really? I always wanted to do a comedy.” There are some funny scenes. Lee was a great actor, and could switch genres. He did two more films with Jim Brown, Take a Hard Ride and Kid Vengeance

59-The Texas Chainsaw Massacre-(1974)-A surprise “ gore” film with very little gore. Rex Reed said it was the most horrifying film that he ever saw, which was supposed to be a negative review but enticed people to see the film. Full of unrelenting suspense and terror, Toby Hooper’s first film left a huge mark on the genre and created a unique character in Leatherface, played brilliantly by Gunnar Hansen.

The beauty of this film is that your mind sees things that aren’t on screen. 

The terror is relentless, the violence is appalling, and TCM is a horror classic. TCM2 was the sequel, but in spite of the excessive gore, it drifted into comedy. Plus, it had Dennis Hopper in the lead who looked like he wished he was doing something else. Other shitty sequels and “revisions” followed. Available on Dark Sky Entertainment.

60-Death Wish-(1974)-Crime was out of control in New York City in the early 70s. Charles Bronson starred as Paul Kersey, a pacifist driven to violence after a home invasion. People cheered every time Kersey took out a mugger. The film elevated Bronson to superstar status and created the vigilante genre. Vigilante, Vigilante Force, Fighting Back, and other films followed. 

Bronson returned for 4 sequels and would play similar roles in other films. A “subway vigilante,” Bernard Getz, shot four muggers who attacked him with screwdrivers. Death Wish was condemned for these copycat vigilantes ,but crime continued, and some people fought back.

61-I Spit on Your Grave-(1978)-Originally released as Day of the Woman, distributor Jerry Gross changed the title to I Spit on Your Grave. The tagline “This Woman has Just Cut, Chopped, Broken, and Burned Five Men Beyond Recognition” was false; it was four men, and no one got burned. The film has brutal gang rape scenes, and Jennifer ( Camille Keaton) is the target of much abuse.

After healing up, she dispatches her rapists one by one: castration, hanging, and axe in the back, etc. It’s a rough watch but became an exploitation classic after being roundly condemned by critics. Jerry Gross was on a roll with this , Zombie, and The Boogyman. Sadly ,these films would be his last
hurrah.

62-The Animal Lover-(1971)-How this ran a couple of weeks before being yanked just shows how crazy the 70s were. A farm girl has sex with dogs, pigs, and a horse. After being pulled, the film was made into 8mm loops with all the animal scenes. These were sold for years in XXX shops and even made it to VHS. Someone actually had the balls to list the 16mm version of the film on eBay.

63-Don’t Open the Window -(1974)-aka Let Sleeping Corpses Lie, aka Breakfast at the Manchester Morgue, aka The Living Dead at the Manchester Morgue. The best Night of the Living Dead ripoff was cut to shit by distributor Hallmark. A machine that emits radiation to kill bugs brings corpses back to life and makes babies attack their caregivers.

Ray Lovelock stars as George, who is accused of murder by mean cop, Arthur Kennedy. The living dead here can toss tombstones at people and tear them apart. When the machine is “turned up,” bodies in the aforementioned morgue go on a flesh-ripping rampage. Wild film now uncut on disc from Blue Underground.

64-Cannibal Apocalypse-(1980)-Aka Cannibals in the Streets, aka Invasion of the Flesh Hunters. This takes cannibals out of the jungle and into downtown Atlanta. Several Vietnam vets, John Saxon, Giovani Radice, and Tony King, get a cannibal virus. Antonio Margheriti directs. Extremely gory and violent, a payoff scene has Radice trying to climb out of a sewer only to be shotgunned from behind. There is a hole in his chest the size of a basketball, and you see guys running when the camera lingers on the wound.

This film was cut to pieces when released here. Back in the bootleg VHS days, I had three different versions of the film, and all were missing something. Available from Kino Lorber.

65-Mad Max-(1979)-AIP imported this film from Australia . For whatever reason, they “dubbed” it in American. Pre-antisemitic Mel Gibson is Max, a cop in a post-apocalyptic landscape hunting down the bikers that killed his family. The really insane stunt driving made this a huge hit. It packed the crowds in at the North Jersey Drive-Ins and inner-city grindhouses.

The sequel, Mad Max 2 or The Road Warrior, was an even bigger hit. These films started the post-apocalyptic genre. Similar films were shot in Italy and the Philippines: Stryker, 2020 Texas Gladiators, Warriors of the Wasteland, etc. The film even inspired a wrestling tag team, The Road Warriors , who were huge in major wrestling promotions. A 3^rd film, Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, completed the trilogy.

66-The Northvale Cemetery Massacre-(1975)-here we have a biker film where the bikers are the good guys. The one-sheet poster featured a fat cop with the tagline “ The Day Law and Order Went Berserk.” A rich girl is raped by a cop. The cop goes to the girl’s father and tells him a biker gang did it. The father hires a sniper to take out the bikers.

The sniper takes out a few gang members, as does the crooked cop. At the funeral for the dead bikers, a helicopter attacks the funeral. The bikers loaded one coffin with weapons and shot down the copter. It has the 70’s downbeat ending as the cop and a biker face off. Available from VCI Entertainment.

67-Three on a Meat Hook-(1973)-This one did a quick run through the drive-ins during the summer of ‘73. An early film by William Girdler (Grizzly) has four girls on a weekend trip winding up with their car breaking down and going to a farmhouse shared by Billy and Pa. Pa chastises Billy for bringing the girls there. “ You know what happens when you get near women,” he is reminded.

So the four girls are brutally murdered. Pa blames Billy. Now we have zero action until Billy gets shitfaced and is taken home by a barmaid. Love blooms and she wants to visit the farm with her girlfriend. Pa serves a dinner of “veal” cutlets. Then puts a pickaxe through the sleeping girlfriend’s chest. Seems that Billy’s Mom isn’t dead and has become a cannibal, and the three girls are the source of the veal. This is all explained to us by a shrink at the end.

The film vanished and has been only available on bogus VHS companies. It’s either “lost” or whoever owns it wants too much money for the rights. A sleazy little gem that has its moments.

68-The Corpse Grinders-(1971)-Ted V Mikel’s most loved film is actually a comedy. Well ,that’s what Ted told us. A cut-rate pet food company is buying corpses on the cheap and grinding them up for cat food. The bad side effect is the cats start eating their owners. The “grinder” is a big cardboard box with a real meat grinder at the end. People go into the box, and you see the meat come out.

Yeah, it’s cheesy and weird, but Ted did a brilliant move that became a grindhouse and drive-in legend. Death Dimension or Spend a Night in the Grave had Ted take the Corpse Grinders, another film that he picked up, The Undertaker and His Pals, and an Italian clunker, The Embalmer aka Monster of Venice. Sometimes The Worm Eaters would be the third film.

This triple bill bounced around the tri-state area all summer, then was brought back in the winter on 42^nd Street. I met Ted early in my career . He was a really good guy and a friend. He just loved filmmaking and worked up until the day he died. Corpse Grinders is available on Alpha Oldies.

69-Hooker’s Revenge-(1973)-aka They Call Her One Eye aka Thriller a Cruel Picture. Cut by 20 minutes, this Swedish import featured Christina Lindberg in the title role. Forced into prostitution and having her eye scooped out by her pimp, this is sort of a Swedish Death Wish as she goes out for revenge with a sawed-off shotgun.

The hardcore sex scenes were removed , plus Lindberg wasn’t in them. All the nudity and violence was left intact. It was also released as Swedish Vice Girl. For whatever reason, this film has a huge cult following. The company that released it, Synapse Films, apparently didn’t have the rights to it, and a proposed Blu-ray got a cease-and-desist order.

70-Vigilante-(1982)-Bill Lustig shot this film in some of the worst areas of NYC. Robert Forster is Eddie, whose son is killed, and his wife is cut up by a street gang. A sleazy lawyer (Joe Spinnel) pays off a judge to get the leader of the gang off. Eddie loses it and attacks the judge. He gets 30 days and is befriended by Rake( Woody Strode).

When he gets out, he joins Fred Williamson and Richard Bright to hunt the gang leaders down. When this ran in a 42^nd Street theater, the crowd went nuts and was cheering the revenge scene. The funny back story is that NYC Hell’s Angels President, Sandy Alexander, was cast as a prison guard. Woody Strode actually knocked him out during the fight scene. Available from Blue Underground.

71-Terminal Island-(1973)-“ Were We Dump Our Human Garbage”. An island becomes a maximum security prison for our worst convicts. After abolishing the death penalty, criminals are dumped on this island. Two groups fight each other, one led by a psychopath. Tom Sellack appears as a mercy killing doctor. Other inmates are Phyllis Davis, Marta Kristen, Roger E. Mosley, Barbra Leigh, Don Marshal, and Jeff Duel.

Plenty of nudity and violence as the groups get weapons and attack each other. It’s a bit different than the other WIP films. When Tom Selleck became famous with Magnum PI, he didn’t forget his co stars in this film. He used Davis and Mosley in that series several times. Available from Kino Lorber.

72-Armed Response -(1986)-aka The Jade Jungle-Fred Olen Ray’s crime caper got a wide release. A stolen statue from a crime lord ,Tanaka, has two investigators looking for it. One, Clay Roth, is killed, and the other takes off with the ransom money. His family, who are combat veterans, decide to even the score. Plenty of shootouts, car crashes, and all the mayhem you would expect from Fred.

And the cast, holy shit, Lee Van Cleef, David Carradine, Mako, Ross Hagan, Laurene Landon, Brent Huff, Michael Berryman, Dick Miller, and Burr DeBenning. Look for Michele Bauer as a nightclub dancer. Originally, Lee Van Cleef turned the role down. Fred went to his house and rewrote the script so that Lee would do the film. He said that he enjoyed working with Lee. This film gave Fred opportunities to do other films.

73-Django-(1966)-the film ran for a week, then vanished. Those that saw it couldn’t forget it. A man comes into a muddy town dragging a coffin. In the coffin is a machine gun. Franco Nero at 25 years old is Django. If a known “American” actor had been cast, it might have gotten more notice. With a body count of 180, it was banned in several countries including the UK.

Today it is considered one of the best spaghetti westerns. Nero as Django plays a Mexican gang against the KKK. All the sympathetic characters die. Django has his hands crushed as he double-crossed the bandits. He’s left in a cemetery with crippled hands to face six gunmen. Even though it tanked here, the film was a huge hit in Europe and the Far East. In Germany, any film with Nero became a Django film. Over 50 unrelated “sequels” were made. The only real sequel was Django Strikes Again in 1987. 

Nero asked for director Sergio Corbucci’s blessing to film it; otherwise, he wouldn’t consider making it. The film is available from Blue Underground and Arrow.

74-Let Me Die a Woman-(1976)-Doris Wishman’s “documentary” is pure exploitation. This ran at The Anco Theater on the corner of 42^nd Street & 8^th Avenue. The selling point is a sex change operation. We follow one lady who gets some butt love from Harry Reems sans moustache. Several unattractive transgendered ladies are interviewed. Doctor Leo Wollman explains everything to us. Someone bet me that I couldn’t sit through this film. Easiest money I ever made.

75-Fleshpot on 42^nd Street-aka The Girls of 42^nd Street-(1972)-This Milligan film might have been his best. Starring former Playboy Playmate,Laura Cannon, Harry Reems, and Neil Flanagan, the conversations in this film mirror conversations I personally heard while drinking in similar bars. Everyone is hustling, Dusty is a hooker, Cherry Lane is a drag queen. Dusty is looking for true love, she almost finds it with Bob( Reems) but Bob is hit by a car.

Dusty also gets booked into an unwilling gangbang with a group of men including Fred Lincoln. Some scenes seem to have been shot from a moving car as we get a lot of footage of the area. Two versions of the film were released, a hardcore version and a softcore version. William Mishkin was the distributor. This film is the real thing. Andy Milligan lived on 42^nd Street and was immersed in the underground culture. His sex films are a lot better than his horror films. Take it from a guy who was there, this is as real as it gets.

76-Kink-O-Rama-(1976)-Gloria Leonard is a sex therapist with a frigid patient, Cindy ( Jenny Baxter). The film is comprised of Lassie Braun-produced porn loops. The loops are interspersed between sessions. Lassie Braun shot some really extreme porn in Europe . He had Vikings, nuns, plus explosions of semen, piss, and blood.

His loops were in every peepshow in NYC. Kink O Rama opened at The Cameo Theater on 8^th Avenue. The theater had a reputation for showing offbeat films like this one , Femmes de Sade, and other “offbeat” films. One loop featured a “pirate” with a hook for a hand. He played with the girl’s pussy as flies buzzed around. Available from After Hours Cinema.

77-The Hills Have Eyes-(1977)-Wes Craven’s second feature is pure horror and still packs a nasty punch almost 50 years later. A family in an RV winds up broken down in the desert. A family of inbred cannibals attacks them. This film debuted at The Rialto on 42^nd Street. It had a huge mock-up of Michael Berryman’s face and compared it to freaks.

The horror is unrelenting as the cannibals kill the father, then set him on fire to draw out the others. They grab a baby after killing its mother. Now it’s a war for survival between the civilized and the savages. Michael Berryman became a horror icon and is one of the nicest people you’ll ever meet. Dee Wallace went on to The Howling and E.T. A shitty sequel was made, er, a Pluto had his throat torn out, so why is he still alive? Then there was a good remake, followed by another shitty sequel. Watch the original, it
still works. Available from Arrow.

78-The Fireworks Woman AKA Angela the Fireworks Woman (1974)-Wes Craven directs this as Abe Snake and does a cameo appearance as the Devil. Jennifer Jordan and Eric Edwards are brother and sister. They have sex, but Peter (Edwards) joins the priesthood. He sends Angela to work for a rich parishoner who introduces her to S&M. She leaves her, then joins Helen Madigan in a threeway in a barn. She keeps going back to see her brother in a confessional. He refuses to talk to her.

Walking past a row of boats, she is dragged into an ice house and brutally raped on a pile of dead fish. She stages a party and invites all the members of her brother’s church. Nice to see that Jamie Gillis, Marc Steven, and Dennis Christopher are all churchgoers. Peter finds out and arrives in the middle of the orgy. He takes his sister and leaves the church.

This one is really twisted. On top of the incest plot, we have rape, pissing, fisting, double penetration, S&M, and a guy fucks a fish. Craven’s skill as a director shines here. This has yet to find any kind of release, but a Blu-ray was included in Sleaze Fiend Magazine #6.

79-Hot Spur-(1968) An “adult” western that is really a roughie. Written by Lee Frost and Bob Cresse, directed by Lee Frost ,produced by Wes Bishop and Bob Cresse, this is a vicious film. A Mexican stablehand’s sister is raped by ranch hands. Carlo kidnaps the rancher’s wife, Susan, as revenge. He rapes her in a shack, then apologizes. He sets traps for the rancher’s men. He guns them down, then uses a whip on Susan.
After these riderless horses come back to the ranch, the rancher goes after Carlo. They have it out while Susan listens. She hears footsteps, then shoves a knife into the intruder’s guts. It’s her husband. Seeing this, she stabs him again and runs past Carlo’s body. Yeah, WTF? 70’s downbeat ending. Available from Alpha Blue Archives.

80-The Street Fighter-(1974) The first film that got the dreaded X rating for violence. Terry ( Sonny Chiba) is hired to kidnap a rich heiress. When the Yazuka won’t meet his price, they decide to kill him. Insane martial arts violence with crushed skulls, spurting blood, and more. The film made Sonny Chiba overhuge with the martial arts fans.

There was a sequel, Return of the Street Fighter, and Sister Street Fighter. Sonny was so over with the crowd that local weed dealers on 46^th Street sold bags of weed called “Chiba.” There would be a line of cars with Jersey plates around the block every Saturday night. It was really good shit.

81-Slave of the Cannibal God-(1978)-Aka Mountain of the Cannibal God aka Prisoner of the Cannibal God. Ursula Andress and Stacy Keach star in this cannibal film directed by Sergio Martino. It has the usual animal cruelty, a monkey thrown to a python, and other nauseating crap. For whatever reason, this was in the middle of a triple bill with The Street Fighter and Return of the Street Fighter that ran at the Times Square Theater.

Ursula’s husband is missing on the island of Roku. Keach knows the area because he was captured by the cannibals. He saved the chief’s son and became part of the tribe until escaping. The missing husband was looking for uranium and is dead with a Geiger counter embedded in his chest. Ursula is stripped and painted white. There’s even a cannibal dwarf.

Several companies have put this film out, but Blue Underground’s Mountain of the Cannibal God has footage of a guy fucking a large pig, and a hot native girl diddling herself. Now that’s entertainment.

82-Shanghai Joe-(1973) Aka The Fighting Fists of Shanghai Joe Aka The Dragon Strikes Back. Joe comes to America to become a cowboy. He takes a job , but he’s herding Mexican slaves and takes action when they are mistreated. After taking out the cowboys, their boss, who enjoys shooting Mexicans for fun, is really pissed. He hires four killers to take him out:

Burying Sam( Gordon Mitchell) , Pedro the Cannibal (Robert Hundar),Tricky the Gambler ( Giocomo Rossi Stuart), and Jack the Scalper

( Klaus Kinski). All are dispatched in a bloody manner. Finally, a martial arts killer is brought in. Joe kills him with a palm strike to the heart. This was the first combining of martial arts and spaghetti westerns. Wild East put out the Blu-ray.

83-The Blind Dead –(1971)AKA Tombs of the Blind Dead -heavily edited version released by Hallmark and paired with Twitch of the Death Nerve (Bay of Blood)-Templar Knights rise from the dead and drink the blood of their victims. A woman fights with her boyfriend, hops off a train, and finds ruins to camp out for the night. The knights rise and kill her. They find her body and take it to the local morgue. Her boyfriend and some others want to investigate the ruins. The body comes back to life and kills the creepy morgue attendant.

The dead girl stalks another girl and gets set on fire. At the ruins, the two couples bicker, and there is a rape. The knights arise and kill everyone except one woman who flags down the train. The knights board the train and kill everyone.

The skeletal zombies are impressive. Blue Underground put out a restored version with all the gore put back in. It was a hit and had three sequels.

84-The Exterminator-(1980)- Film starts in Vietnam with Robert Ginty and Steve James as POWs. One POW is decapitated. James gets free and kills a bunch of VC before the camp is blown up. All this is before the credits roll. The two are working on a loading dock . They break up a gang called The Getto Ghouls who are robbing trucks. The gang ambushes James, leaving him on life support.

Ginty tracks down the gang and leaves the two gang leaders in a basement full of rats. Then he goes after mobsters, child molesters, pimps, etc. Using fists, fire, and bullets, he announces to NYC that The Exterminator is cleaning up the city. A contract is put out on him, and he survives to do a really bad sequel. Synapse put out a version with some of the removed gore put back in. Also, there is a subplot that sort of derails the film. It just looks too clean. With the longer running time, the film drags.

85-The Big Bird Cage-(1972)- The WIP films shot in the Philippines started with Women in Cages 1971 and ended with Savage Sisters 1974. These films ran the grind house and drive-in circuit in the early 70s. They were frequently brought back as double features. These films introduced us to Pam Grier , Sid Haig, Vic Diaz, Anitra Ford, Roberta Collins, and John Ashley.

The Big Bird cage was especially over the top with Sid and Pam as revolutionaries looking to bust women out of a prison. Pam gets locked up there. Sid poses as a gay guard trying to seduce Vic Diaz, who also plays a gay guard. The interplay is hilarious. The “bird cage” is a sugar mill that hurts and kills inmates.

The prisoners revolt, a bunch push Vic to the floor, and sit on his face. In an interview, Vic said he almost passed out because their hygiene was that bad. Lots of explosions, gunplay, and violence. DirectorJack Hill called Sid and Pam his version of Tracy and Hepburn. Sid was a wonderful person who truly appreciated his fans. I miss him every day. Available from Shout Factory.

86-Cutthroats Nine-(1972)—a gore western? Well, yeah, this fucker is brutal from start to finish. A wagon load of convicts is ambushed by bandits seeking gold. After some throat slashing and a head bashed in, they stampede the wagon. Sgt. Brown and his daughter try to march the cons to a fort. The cons amuse themselves singing songs about how they’ll kill Brown. He shoots one belligerent con in the head.

Well, eventually, they burn Brown alive. They rape his daughter and take her with them to a trading post. One con has a beef with the owner and disembowels him. The girl finds a stick of dynamite and blows everyone up. This was pushed as a horror film. They gave out “terror masks” as a promotion. A rough ride all the way. Code Red had put it out.

87-The Klansmen-(1974)-AKA The Burning Cross-Major studio release from Paramount is nothing more than a race exploitation film. Starring Lee Marvin, Richard Burton, Cameron Mitchell, O.J. Simpson , Lola Falana, and Linda Evans. The fake town of Atoka has every white person in it a member of the KKK.

When protesters come in to get blacks registered to vote, the Klan isn’t happy. Then a white woman gets raped by a black man. They chase Garth(Simpson) and his friend into the woods. The friend falls and the Klan is on him. They castrate him, then shoot him. Garth starts taking them out with a sniper rifle.

Burton’s farm is a haven for poor blacks, that pisses off the Klan. The deputy ( Mitchell) rapes Lola Falana in a bloody scene. Then the Klan attacks the farm en masse. Sheriff Track ( Marvin) has to pick a side. Paramount disowned the film. Burton and Marvin were drinking heavily, Burton 3 bottles of vodka a day. Both men had no recollection of working together. Available from Olive Films.

88-The Molesters-(1964)-Bet that title lured a lot of perverts into theaters to see what amounts to a documentary of deviant behavior. Shot in Switzerland of all places. “You will see the Amoral, you will see the Sadists” the poster screamed. Actually, you’ll be bored out of your mind watching this . Creepy guys hit on young girls. Court cases, and more bullshit. The ads drew people into the theaters. Available from SWV.

89-Mark of the Devil-(1970)-the first film rated “V” for violence. It also might have been the first film that gave vomit bags out to patrons. “Witches” are hunted down, tortured, and killed by witch finder Albino( Reggie Nalder). The selling point of the film is a tongue ripped out of a girl’s head. A nasty little film that, of course, had a sequel. Available from Arrow Entertainment

90-Coffy-(1973)- was Pam Grier’s first starring role after doing all those WIP films in the Philippines. Director Jack Hill was at the helm, and Sid Haig co starred. Coffy is a nurse whose sister got into drugs. She hunts the dealers down and kills them. The bad guys here are both colors. Mob bosses, politicians, and a double cross from someone she trusted. In many’s opinion, this was her best film. A high point is Pam hiding razor blades in her Afro and having to fight another ‘ho. 

When the ho grabs her ‘Fro, she gets her hands sliced up. Other films Pam did were Friday Foster, Foxy Brown, Sheba Baby , Bucktown, and others. Pam had a long career and is still working today.

91-Twitch of the Death Nerve-(1971)-aka Bay of Blood,  aka Carnage. Mario Bava’s body count film was completely ripped off for Friday the 13^th Part 2. A wealthy countess is murdered, and her “heirs” seem to be killing each other off in various gruesome manners. A machete to the face, a spear through two people screwing, etc.

It was paired with Mark of the Devil Part 2 , both films were released by Hallmark. Another film with a downbeat ending as the entire cast dies except for two kids. The inventive killings were incorporated into Friday the 13^th Part 2. This was available from Anchor Bay in a box set.

92-The Scavengers-(1969)-another western from Lee Frost, Bob Cresse, and Wes Bishop. Ragged Confederate soldiers led by Captain Harris are out to rob a shipment of gold. Harris knows the war is over, but doesn’t tell his men. Harris is a psycho and a racist.

They ride through a shanty town full of ex-slaves. Harris calls them animals. Mr. Marsh runs the saloon and whorehouse. Look for Ushi Digart in a role of about 30 seconds. Marsh tells the Captain that the war has been over for months. Harris shoots him to shut him up. They ambush a small convoy of Union soldiers. When the strongbox doesn’t have the reported $300K, they torture the Union captain and rape his wife’s black maid. Liberal use of the “N” word makes you want to crawl out of the theater.

Now Harris tries to rape Ellie, the wife of the Captain. But he can’t get it up. So Harris gives her to his men to rape. The maid rallies the blacks in shanty town. A battle breaks out and the Wild Bunch it ain’t. All the blacks die and the Captain has only two men left. Knowing he lied to them, they leave him pinned under his horse as vultures land close to him. Nasty film available on a double bill with Hot Spur from Alpha Blue Archives. 

93-A Dirty Western-(1975)-Someone decided to merge porn and westerns. I, in a drunken haze, thought it was a spaghetti western. Three convicts escape prison. They go to a ranch and find a rancher’s wife and three daughters. The wife is raped on a table. He asks that they leave her girls alone. They double-team her, then take off with the girls.

The rancher and a posse arrive to rescue the girls. The girls are having an orgy with the rancher. Two of them are shot, and the wife empties a rifle into the back of the con who raped her. This isn’t your ordinary crotch opera. It plays out like a real movie would. Good production values and decent acting, plus Barbra Bourbon isn’t hard to look at. Not sure if this is available anywhere.

94-The Toolbox Murders-(1978)-this one starts off with a bunch of murders in a hotel complex. A masked killer uses a claw hammer, screwdriver, and nail gun on his victims. Porn star , Kelly Nichols, is nailed to a bathroom wall. A lot of blood and nudity, then it starts to drag. The killer, a down-and-out Cameron Mitchell, kidnaps a young girl, child star Pamelyn Ferdin.

He sings her weird songs as the film pretty much shit’s the bed. Toby Hooper did a remake in 2004 that was a lot bloodier than this film. Some say it’s the better film. Available from Blue Underground.

95-Maniac-(1980)-New York lensed slasher film directed by William Lustig, starring Joe Spinnel, and gore effects by Tom Savini. The granddaddy of the slasher films, Joe Spinnelscalps, garrots, stabs , and slashes women to death in an over-the-top performance. This film was highly anticipated by gore fans due to articles in Fangoria Magazine.

It cemented Savini’s reputation as a SPFX artist, but Tom disowned the film, something that enraged Spinnel. The film drew SRO crowds on the first week of its release. There was an outcry that the film encouraged violence against women. It got a self-imposed X rating. Available from Blue Underground.

96-The Psychopath-(1973) aka An Eye for an Eye – Kiddee show host, Mr. Rabbey really loves kids, but snaps when he finds out that several parents re abusing their kids. After one kid dies from the abuse, Mr. Rabbey goes on a rampage . The parents of the dead kid are getting drunk. Rabbey shows up and beats the woman to death with a bat. Then he strangles the drunken husband. 

He kills another set of parents who broke their kid’s arm. When his show gets cancelled, he goes off the deep end. He zeros in on parents that are abusing a little girl. He is about to kill the father until he hears him arguing with his wife on the phone about her abusing the girl. He goes after the mother. He is about to kill her when the little girl shoots him. Then she shoots her mother. Another downbeat 70’s ending.

Joe Spinnel wanted to resurrect the character for Maniac 2. Sadly, Joe passed away before that could happen. This film seems to be lost as it only got a VHS release as An Eye for an Eye.

97-White Slaves of Chinatown-(1964)- The first Olga film starring bitch goddess Audrey Campbell as a slaver, dope pusher, dominatrix, and lesbian. It would be the first of four Olga films. Stan Borden distributed, George Weiss produced, and Joseph P. Mawra directed.

Olga breaks girls that just got out of prison. She hooks them on drugs and turns them out as prostitutes. She is partners with “the syndicate”. One girl dies during a botched abortion. Others are whipped, beaten, and tortured. One girl had her hand crushed in a vice. The film is narrated. The next films would have dialog and would get progressively more violent. Olga’s House of Shame and Olga’s Girls followed. Olga’s Dance Hall Girls was the last film, but it didn’t have Campbell as Olga. SWV used to have these, not sure who has the rights to them now.

98-Massacre Mafia Style-(1974)-Duke Mitchell of the Martin & Lewis knockoff team of Petrillo & Mitchell wrote, directed, and starred in this mob movie. Micelli is the son of a mafia Don who was exiled to Sicily. He wants back into the business. He goes to Hollywood and kidnaps a West Coast Boss and holds him for ransom.

Now with the ransom, he’s back in business. He now tries to take down Super Spook , a Hollywood pimp. Mitchell had been in a couple of mob movies, Babyface Nelson (1957) and Crime in the Streets (1956). Lots of shootouts and action in this one. Available from Grindhouse Releasing.

99-Snuff-(1977)-Biggest hoax ever perpetrated on filmgoers. The Catholic Church spread rumors of a stag film circulation that had a woman killed in it after having sex. A distributor bought an unfinished film from Michael and Roberta Findley, Slaughter, that was shot in South America. 

Allan Shackleton shot ‘fake snuff footage’ in porno director Carter Steven’s loft. Carter leased the loft out; he didn’t shoot the footage as he was attending a convention.

Shackleton debuted the film at the National Theater, hired picketers to protest the film, and jacked the admission price to $7. The film did great business. At one point, Shackleton said, “ I’d be a fool to admit this is a hoax.” Actually, the film is a turd, the effects unconvincing , but it’s a legend in exploitation. Available from Blue Underground.

100-Invitation to Ruin-(1968-1975) aka The Invitation. A nasty piece of celluloid trash released in 1968, then had new scenes shot ( that don’t match) and released again in 1974. You get kidnapping, white slavery ,drug abuse, torture, bondage, and overt sadism.

Jerry is a stud that is hired by gangster ,Ernie, to find women with no families, seduce them, then give them to Ernie’s guys to be drugged and broken in as sex slaves. Jerry gets involved with Ernie’s daughter. They get caught, and Jerry is castrated. Ernie puts his daughter in the hands of Mama Lupo, a horribly obese woman who loves torturing other women.

Jerry lures Ernie out of a bar and stabs him to death. One of the girls gets free, and they kill Mama Lupo. The film has a weird ending that sorta makes no sense. You’ll need to wash your eyes out after viewing it. Available from Alpha Blue Archives.

I’m sure that I missed some films here, but these are ones I have vivid memories of. The mainstream films listed spawned imitators that put out low-budget versions of the bigger films. Sometimes they were better. Sometimes they were pulled after running a couple of days. It was an experience back then; all this stuff was new, exciting, and taboo.

Now, 42^nd Street has been sterilized. The grit is gone, the people behind the films are mostly gone, and those majestic grind houses met the wrecking ball. But the life blood of those theaters, the films, live on. It is an experience that I cherish because there was no other place in the world like 42^nd Street in New York City.