The Blood Spattered Bride (1972)

Directed by Vicente Aranda
Starring Maribel Martin, Alexandra Bastedo, Simon Andreu
Rated R
Spain

"Are you saying Susan's a lesbian?"
"No, I'm saying she's being dominated by a lesbian."

An unnamed, over-aged asshole from a wealthy Spanish family (Simon Andreu) somehow manages to snag a young and beautiful bride, Susan (Maribel Martin, The House That Screamed). They book a luxury hotel room on their wedding night, but after vividly imagining her stocking-headed husband assaulting her, she demands they find an alternate honeymoon spot. Hubby drives them to one of his relatives' estates, a dreary mansion surrounded by woods. Once there, the 30 year old virgin finally beds his new bride and finds that he prefers the rough stuff. He spends the next couple days assaulting and ravaging the beleaguered Susan every chance that he gets.

Susan is at first compliant with hubby's demented S&M fantasies, but soon grows tired of his shenanigans. One afternoon while wandering in the woods out back, she spies a striking blonde woman loitering under a clump of trees. She tries to investigate but is thwarted by her husband, who lifts her off the ground by her hair and then forces her to fellate him. He's kind of a creep, this cat.

Later than evening, the blonde slips silently into Susan's bedroom and sucks on her neck. Then she hands her a dagger, ostensibly to stab her rape-y husband with.

And that's exactly what she does. Like 50 times.

Well, in her dreams, anyway.

Turns out the blonde is one of her husband's ancestors, Mircalla Karstein (ethereal British beauty Alexandra Bastedo). Astute Euro-horror fans will recognize the name - that's right, this is yet another riff on Sheridan LeFanu's novel "Carmilla", the blueprint for the wave of kinky lesbian vampire flicks that flourished in the early 70's, a wave that also included The Vampire Lovers, Lust for a Vampire, Vampyres, and Vampyros Lesbos. Unlike most of the Camilla clones, however, Mircalla is less of villainous apparition and more of a zonked out weirdo who randomly manifests herself in strange places. At one point, hubby finds her buried in the sand at the beach, naked except for a scuba mask.

Mircalla/Camilla ingratiates herself into this already weird clan and becomes Susan's secret lover/confidante. Is the mysterious Camilla actually an undead vampire, or is she just a bewitching seductress, out to snatch gorgeous Susan way from her boorish husband?

She's both. Spoiler alert.

Drowsy and hypnotic but less flamboyant than many of the Psychedelic Euro-horror shows of the era, Blood Spattered Bride is moody, slow-sipping 70's vamp cinema.

During its initial theatrical release, when it was double-billed with I Dismember Mama, Bride was sold to American audiences as a gory shocker. While that is most certainly not the case, it does have some very bloody moments, most of them in the guns-blazing finale. For the most part, however, the film gets by on mood and atmosphere.

Hampered a bit by a square score (pipe organs in groovy 1972?) and dodgy dubbing, Blood Spattered Bride is passable bottom-of-the-bill stuff, of interest mostly for a couple of seriously kinky set-pieces (a two-girl coffin!) and its two lovely leading ladies.

- Ken McIntyre

Dead Girls (1990)

Directed by Dennis Devine
Written by Steve Jarvis
Starring Angela Eads, Diana Karanikas, Kay Shaber
Unrated
USA


Well, it's got to be the mom. She looks like one of those outraged 'Citizens for decency' during the LBJ days with a face like a tin can and a voice like a lawn mower. She must be behind the ritual slaughter of the Dead Girls, the wildly popular death obsessed power pop band whose odes to carnage and murder have given rise to a rash of teenage suicides. The fact that her own daughter is the lead singer of the band is bad enough, but now her youngest has fallen prey to the Dead Girls as well, barely escaping from a wrist slashing attempt, the results of indulging in the band's subliminal death rock. But she's kind of old, and all that killin' is hard work, so maybe it's not her after all.

This is an early effort from no-budget, shot-on-video schlock factory Cinematrix , produced in 1989, the very tail end of the slasher era. As such, it's a distillation of all the industry standards- many, many possible suspects, just as many possible victims, a secluded cabin in the woods, an uncaring cop, a weapons obsessed weirdo, and red herrings galore. Dead Girls even features a host of snarky in-jokes and a killer in a white skull mask, pre-dating Scream by almost a decade, and the whole weird outing reminds me of why the genre was so popular in the first place- it's fun, quite frankly, to see annoying teenagers get sliced and diced, and it's even more fun trying to figure out who did it.

And who is killing the Dead girls? It can't be Brooke, can it? Poor Brooke, still recovering from shock and blood loss from her suicide attempt, who agreed to go on this ill-fated camping trip with her rock star sister to forget the horrible tragedy. It might have been a relaxing weekend, too, until the bodies started piling up. The Dead Girls' high-powered, Asian Rueben Kincaid of a manager, Artie (Brian Chin) gets nail-gunned. The super groupie in the Elvira wig gets strangled in the woods. Band member Suzy Stryker gets drowned at the beach. Jeff, the...well, I'm not sure what Jeff is doing there, besides looking like a gay Tom Selleck- poor Jeff gets stabbed in the neck. Somebody's obviously got it out for the Dead Girls. But surely, Brooke's too weak to go on a killing spree. Her weird, uptight nurse, though- she seems awfully attached to Brooke. Maybe she's up to the skull duggery. Or maybe it's the burly retarded groundskeeper. But is it ever the burly retarded groundskeeper in movies like this?

Dead Girls is a retro-blast of slasher mania. You won't figure out who the murderer is until the end, and even then you might not know what's going on. Let's just say that the record industry is a cut throat business in more ways than one.

Availability: VHS. Old school!

- Ken McIntyre

Killer Biker Chicks (2009)

Directed by Regan Redding
Starring Elske McCain, Brenna Roth, Sara Plotkin, Rose Garlano, Scarlet Salem
Unrated
USA

"I've seen better looking heads on Astrozombies."

Killer Biker Chicks is a gleefully scuzzy new entry in the long and winding history of cycle-psycho cinema, a low-ball desert epic about big girls with big guns and even bigger tits. Call it Russ Meyer on meth.

The principal cast is made of up snarling, tattooed boob queens who represent a demented family, of sorts: Mother (Rose Garlano), obviously, is the matriarch of the clan; Doc (Elske McCain) is her scum-wastin' sister-in-leather; Babydoll (Sara Plotkin) and Mike the Mechanic (Scarlet Salem), are the two darling daughters. Together they run a bar/carwash/garage/truck stop/strip club/drugstore in the Nevada desert, just outside of Vegas.

And that's it, pretty much. Everything else is pretty incidental. A ridiculous-looking hair-metal band show up to get their car fixed and to provide comic relief. Bo (Troma hero Trent Haaga) and his beleaguered girlfriend Vi (Brenna Roth) are a modern-day Mickey and Mallory on the lam.

Clint (director Redding) and Orin (Shannon Fuller) are two rape-y, race-baiting asshole cops running amuck. All these stories eventually overlap in the climax, but for the most part, everybody just runs around naked in the desert, shooting at each other and cursing a lot.

There's several surreal dance numbers as well, including a scene where two Jewish trannies twirl umbrellas to "It's Raining Men", and another where a rockabilly band breaks rocks in prison outfits while they sing a twangy song about jilted love.

There's also a running gag about one Hawkmeir (Rusty Meyers), an Iranian sports car enthusiast lost in the desert that appears to have been crow-barred into the story just so Redding can utilize his vast array of "Ay-rab" jokes, and Meyers can show off his Egyptian Magician impression.

Surprisingly artful, given its surface presentation, Killer Biker Chicks rises above its humble Z-movie stature to rest comfortably among other winning grindhouse revival flicks like Pervert, Feast, Hell Ride, and Devil Girl. What it lacks in plot it makes up for in stylistic aplomb/excess, and the acting - especially given the inexperience of some of the cast - is on par or better than average for a film of this caliber.

Clearly, Killer Biker Chicks has its problems: the race humor often hits a sour note, and 111 minutes is an absolute eternity for a biker flick. It's also got sleaze cinema's all-time dodgiest gang-stabbing murder scene. Still, there's a lot more going on here than you'd think. Fans of curvy chicks, pitch-black humor, extremely gratuitous nudity, and ultra-violent road flicks will find plenty to get revved up about in Killer Biker Chicks.

- Ken McIntyre

Electrical Girl (2001)

Directed by Bowie Lau
Starring Sophie Ngan Chin Man, Charlie Cho, Shu-Kei Wong
Unrated
Hong Kong

"Put on more condoms and it'll look bigger."

Jan (Sophie Ngan Chin Man) was born with a fully-wired g-spot. If she orgasms, sparks literally fly. Having already irreparably damaged dozens of excitable young men along the way, Jan has decided that it's probably best if she avoids boys altogether. Luckily, she can self-stimulate pretty successfully with light bulbs. So that's what she does, a few times a day. Sometimes she even 'lights up' in the bath tub, which seems wildly dangerous.

Jan works in a nondescript office where she spends most of her time chatting with her office-mates about which executive they'd like to bone and then marry. When her boss Leo (Shu-Kei Wong) - who Jan has had a secret crush on for some time - asks for a volunteer to work some overtime, the other girls goad Jan into doing it. They pull an all-nighter together, and when he accidentally falls asleep, she fondles him, just a little, imagining a romance novel-esque love making session. When he wakes up, he wonders why he's numb all over. She tells him that he accidentally stuck his finger into an electrical socket. Which is true, sorta.

Meanwhile, one of Jan's man-hungry friends goes to see Doctor Wong (Charlie Cho, Call Girls '94) complaining of a pain in her hand. When she gets there, she figures she might as well attempt to seduce him, so she takes out her boobs and asks him to check them for tumors. Sexy!

Doc Wong does not find any tumors. So he fucks her.

Jan asks her friend how the appointment went. She tells her it went pretty well. In fact, she says, "He might become my husband."
This does not throw Jan off. Maybe Chinese women fuck and marry their doctors all the time. Jan asks for his card so that she can make an appointment herself. Maybe this horny quack can rid her of her unfortunate condition.

After thoroughly examining her juiced-up vadge - and getting thoroughly shocked - the doctor tells her he can, indeed, fix her. He'll just have to bone her a few times first. Seems valid. In order to ensure that she does not kill him mid-coitus, he puts on a shock-proof plastic suit.

They have sex. She has one of her high voltage orgasms. The doctor survives. His penis, however, does not.

By the way, love and happiness are not Jan's only goals. There's also some orgasm lottery, the Mark Six, that she's trying to win. There's a sizable cash prize. I don't know how that works. We don't have orgasm lotteries in the US.

Jan tries again with Leo, but he admits that he's impotent, so she quits and gets a job as an escort at a sex club. Of course, since she has a tendency to fatally injure her lovers, she ends up with a very specific clientele. For example, one woman sends her over-eager husband to see Jan. He insists on having sex with the poor woman every night, causing her undue physical agony. One date with Jan, however, renders his penis charred and useless for months. Problem solved!

Jan settles into her new life as a callgirl, but Leo throws a monkey wrench into the works when he shows up at the club to profess his love for her. He's also pretty certain that her particular brand of electroshock therapy will cure his impotence. It's a dream come true!

Now all she has to do is quit her job. That's not going to be easy, now that the club has been taken over by Triad gangster Brother Kau, who is fond of breaking noses. When Jan threatens to quit, he demands that she have sex with him first. And to ensure that this tryst go down smoothly, he has Leo kidnapped.

You see where this is all going, right? They agree to meet at a motel. Jan opens the proceedings with a sexy striptease. The fact that she can turn on a lightbulb with her mouth and vagina should be a warning sign, but Kau's a bit of a moron.

How's it all end? Explosively!

A lighter than air sex comedy from low-budget slapstick mogul Lau (The Kung Fu Master is My Grandma), Electrical Girl is a relentlessly silly movie with a very odd worldview, one where women are relentlessly horny, but only have sex for status or cash, and orgasms are measured by their abilities to either win lotteries or blow up penises. Episodic and clunky, it is of interest mostly because of its adorable leading lady. Dollfaced and relentlessly chipper, Sophie Ngan Chin Man is a joy to watch, alternately drop-dead sexy and laugh out loud goofy, sometimes in the same scene. I look forward to seeing her again, preferably in something without so many mutilated genitals.

- Ken McIntyre

Sisters in Leather (1969)

Directed by Zoltan G Spencer
Starring Pat Barrington, Kathy Williams, Karen Thomas
Rated X
USA

"What a hell of a mess."

From the courageous cat who brought us Terror at Orgy Castle comes this time worn tale of a sap and his errant penis. Middle-aged living wreck Joe finds himself being seduced by a Dolly (Karen Thomas, Suburban Pagans), a bubbly blonde teenager. How he got into this position is unknown. It just happened. So there he is, slurping away on her neck in broad daylight, his car parked not too inconspicuously under a clump of trees. Suddenly, out of nowhere, somebody in a black leather jacket, black hat, shades, and gloves pulls a knife on the dude, shows him a Polaroid of this very tryst, and informs him through gritted teeth that the girl is underage. If he doesn't want the photo getting to his wife/boss/priest/mother, than he'll need to cough up $2000.

"We'll be in touch", sneers the blackmailer, and sends him on his way.

Joe has really fucked up with this one. He already has a beautiful wife back home, Mary (Kathy Williams, The Babysitter), who dutifully waits from clad in skimpy lingerie, ready and willing to satisfy his desires as soon as he gets in the door. Unfortunately he's so shaken up by the shakedown that he cannot properly perform. Men are all scum, aren't they?

Dolly calls him the next day to schedule a rendezvous to get the two grand. He shows up, but loses his cool once again and ends up getting naked with her. This time, the black-clad biker chick bashes him in the head until he's unconscious. Then they take the money and haul ass out of there.

The next day, our robbed and beaten pal decides to do a little gumshoe work. He aims to figure out exactly who these monsters are, and then bring them down. All he's seen so far of the knifer-puncher is a black-clad jacket with a lightning bolt. Properly assuming said jacket belongs to a motorcycle enthusiast, he starts searching around the local biker bars for clues. The first one he walks into features a busty tabledancer (Pat Barrington, The Girl With the Hungry Eyes) shaking her titties, so he watches her for ten minutes. He'll never get to the bottom of things at this rate. Eventually he wanders outside to sniff around the bikes. One of the local toughs tells him he's barking up the wrong tree and demands that he scram. He does.

Meanwhile, the Sisters in Leather of the film's title are not through with our hapless hero yet. While he's out looking for them, they have plans for his lingerie-wearing young bride. They drop by his place to pay Mary a visit, showing her the incriminating photos and convincing her that he's nothing but a lily-livered philanderer. Which is true. Then they take her out for a picnic (!). A picnic that soon devolves into a topless photo shoot, naked motorcycle rides, and girl-on-girl suntan lotion rubdowns.

The picnic is about to reach full lesbo orgy when Mary decides that she's not into this scene. I mean, topless rubdowns are one thing, but kissing girls? Yuck! They give her the photo for safekeeping and let her loose.

Strangely, when she gets home she changes her mind. She leaves the photo for her double-crossing hubby to find, and then heads off to stay with her new girl-happy friends.
Her astute hubby follows her and watches the devious plan unfold through the window.

First, the lezzy bikers just let her go to sleep in the other room while they have champagne sex, but the very next day, her initiation into the Sisterhood begins in earnest. Which, as far as I can tell, involves copious amounts of booze and some light-hearted goofin' off on the couch.

Joe heads over the biker joint to find the lightning bolt gang. He tells 'em he's located the ratfinks that stole their emblem, and even worse, "They're dykes!" Naturally, this means war.

Meanwhile, Mary finally gets a clue as to what this is all about when the girls rip her shirt off and drag her to the floor.
"No!" She screams in protest. "I'm not that way!"
"How do you know until you try it?" Asks Dolly.
Good point!

But then the bikers bust in and ruin everything. Or they make everything better. Depends on what you're into.
At any rate, a topless knife fight is involved.

A shamelessly skuzzy anti-epic from the height of the grindhouse era, Sisters in Leather is, on one hand, a bit of cheat: despite the title and the tagline ("No man or woman is safe from these love-hungry hellcats!"), this is not really a biker chick movie at all, and only one of the girls actually wears leather. On the other hand, it is relentlessly grimy, and the nudity is pretty wall-to-wall, so let's call it even. As long as you don't mind threadbare production values, fuzzy black and white photography, wooden acting, wobbly overdubbing, and low-rent fake jazz - or even better, if you love all that stuff - there's plenty to like about this kooky sexploitation romp.

PS: Zoltan G. Spencer disappeared at the dawn of the 70's. No one's seen him for 40 years. I suspect lesbian bikers were involved.

Sisters in Leather is available from Something Weird Video.

- Ken McIntyre

The Girl Most Likely To (1973)

Directed by Lee Phillips
Starring Stockard Channing, Suzanne Zenor, Larry Wilcox
Unrated
USA

Remember those long-gone days when major networks would routinely corral a small truckload of their reigning prime-time stars and squeeze them all into a TV Movie of the Week? This is one of those. Don't let that deter you, however. Sure, there's a jarring commercial break-friendly blackout every 20 minutes and a suspicious lack of cuss words or nudity, but beyond the family-friendly veneer you'll find a wicked bit of pitch-black comedy that plays like a snarky cross between Dr. Phibes and Heathers.

A pre-Grease Stockard Channing toplines as Miriam Knight, a frumpy, dog-faced, wisecracking college girl with high hopes but low self-esteem. Miriam routinely swaps out universities, endlessly searching for a school with a boy-girl ratio lopsided enough for even an uggo like her to have a shot at a boyfriend. She finally decides on State University, since it's got the biggest pool of available men, and does her best to pitch woo.

Her roommate, Heidi ( Suzanne Zenor, the original Chrissy in the first Three's Company pilot), is a vivacious blonde cheerleader hotly pursued by most of the male population at the school. Dim-bulbed and vain, Heidi barely notices her new roomie, and when she does interact with her, it's mostly to bully her into secretarial duties. In exchange, she routinely sets Miriam up on blind dates with her cast-offs, but they always end in bitter humiliation for ugly duckling heroine.

Miriam's object of affection is a lunk-headed football player named Moose (Larry Wilcox, best known as Ponch's motorcycle cop partner in CHIPS). She lucks out when he's forced to take tutoring lessons from her to get his grades up. They end up going to the drive-in together, and Miriam is fairly certain she'll finally lose her virginity - with a popular jock, no less.

Alas, her clumsy attempts at seduction end in mayhem, and Miriam remains unwillingly chaste.

Things finally turn around for our plucky heroine when she scores the lead role in the school play. She even calls up her shlubby on-again off-again fiancé Herman (Warren Berlinger) to come watch her debut performance. It all goes swimmingly until she's handed a bouquet of roses on stage - she's deathly allergic to them. The performance abruptly ends in a fit of sneezes and coughs, Miriam's briefly adoring fans now erupting in derisive laughter at the red-faced actress.

Overcome with grief Miriam tears ass out of there and ends up smashing her car - and most of her face and body - into bits. The paramedics shovel what's left into the ambulance and take her to hospital.

I mentioned that this is a comedy, right?

After several reconstructive surgery procedures and months of rehabilitation, Miriam is finally ready to have her bandages taken off. When she is fully unraveled, she is shocked to find that she is now slender and gorgeous (well, as gorgeous as Stockard Channing can get, anyway), and finds that men are now ga-ga over her. So, naturally, she uses her newly acquired attractiveness to plot the and execute the murders of everyone who has ever wronged her, from Heidi to callous Dr Gates (The Love Boat's own Fred Grandy).

The deaths are not graphic, but they are gruesome - master-of-disguises Miriam convinces Heidi to backflip off their balcony to her doom; Dr Gates is given unnecessary surgery and dies on the operating table; Herman-the-plumber is drowned in a bathtub; one of Miriam's pool-playing blind dates is blown to smithereens with an exploding 8 ball; and so on - and Miriam, who appeared to be quite sane and rational before the surgery, shows no sign of regret or remorse for her killing spree.

Naturally, there's a police investigation. Grizzled detective Ed Asner is on the case. He is reasonably sure he knows who the culprit is. He is also reasonably sure that he's madly in love with her, as well.

Will Miriam finally find true love while she's still knee-deep in a bloody revenge war? And can a by-the-books cop cast a blond eye to the mayhem to snag the sociopath of his dreams?

Sure. Sort of.

Written by Joan Rivers - already obsessed with plastic surgery, nearly forty years ago - and directed by 50's TV actor turned 60/s70's TV everyman Lee Phillips, The Girl Most Likely To is a gleefully mean-spirited piece of work that predates contemporary schoolgirl killer romps like Heathers, Jawbreaker, and Jennifer's Body by decades. Of course, there is very little explanation for why Miriam would go from a friendly, reasonably well-adjusted young lady to a cold-blooded murderess so quickly, but who knows? Maybe they tweaked her brain as well during surgery.

Littered with recognizable faces - Jim Backus is the school's drama instructor, Chuck McCann is the football coach, a very young and pretty Annette O'Toole is one of Miriam's classmates - and anchored by the impressive Channing, who somehow manages to remain likable, even when she's killing everybody around her - The Girl Most Likely To is classic nihilistic 70's cinema, fun and funny and almost absurdly dark. Mean girls - or anyone with an affection/boner for mean girls (guilty!) - will love it.

Clip: The Cheerleader Gets It!

- Ken McIntyre