Big Doll House(1971)

Directed by Jack Hill
Starring Pam Grier, Judy Brown, Sid Haig, Brooke Mills, Pat Woodell
Rated R
USA

"You don't look like a hardened criminal to me"

 The funniest part of this whole movie came right at the beginning for me. Not that that this is a funny movie in any way, or that it's low budget automatically creates funny scenes, or even that it's directed by Jack Hill. No, the funniest part for me was seeing the Metro Goldwyn Mayer intro. I mean somehow Roger Corman secured major distribution though this major studio! How is that even possible? You've got to give it to the man, selling a movie about women in prison to MGM. So yeah, that cracked me up a bit, especially after watching the last MAG movie which was also a Roger Corman production. And like Ken said about the man, he's been using this formula for fifty years now, and it still works.

Big Doll House and indeed Attack of the 50ft Cheerleader are perfect examples of that Roger Coman Formula. Forty two years apart, different directors and producers, and yet it's so obvious that they're related. Both offer nothing more than what you think you're going to get. And both deliver. Whalla! Perfecto. What a formula!

The plot of Big Doll House is pretty simple. A bunch of American babes are in some sort of Banana Republic prison for no detectable reason. They get tortured every once in a while by the sadistic guards and fight amongst themselves for power. And unlike the misleading tag line in the otherwise wonderful poster art, these women are less than pleased by men. They're only real desire is to get the fuck out of there. Still, they make due by having cockroach races, engaging in various dominant and submissive lesbian trysts and dancing around on heroin.

 The only males in the film are a pair of horny fruit and vegetable delivery men(Jerry Franks and Sid Haig) and a hapless prison doctor who's flat performance throughout the movie provide a lot of chuckles.

Pam Grier made her debut in Big Doll House and it's easy to see she's the real star of the film. She lights up every scene she's in and her future as a box office draw is pretty clear. Jack Hill is often credited for discovering her but in his own words she just showed up for a casting call and the rest was history. Her performance alone makes this film worth watching and her brief scenes with Jack Hill staple, Sid Haig are golden.

Grear(Grier) lets Harry(Haig) feel her up and molest her now and then in exchange for cigarettes and heroin for her junkie slave. Fair enough. But life in this women's prison, as sexy as it is, isn't always a bowl of cherries. The main guard is a total pervo and uses some strange combination of military styled BDSM to torture the ladies. Everything from electricity to poisonous snake torture shows up in her sessions, all as a masked figure watches from the distance.

At this point the girls have had it and they get to work planning their escape. Personally I would have liked a little more implied lesbian bonding at this point. They've been cat fighting for the whole film so far and now they're friends and it would have been hot, but whatever.

From this point on it's guns and murder as the girls fight their way out. They trick the boys into helping them, there's another snake scene(only in the Philippines, man)and even a cat who delivers a key securing their escape. Unfortunately all this goodness leads us to the films one major flaw; the unnecessary rape scene.

Eww. Sure she's the bad guy and she had some sort of comeuppance due, but...gross. This scene would have played out way better with some light to maybe heavy lesbian torture by one of the former prisoners. It would have made more sense and ended up a lot hotter. All the men fail at this point in the film. Harry, once at least an understandable character, becomes intolerable. Fred, the other fruit guy does nothing and the hapless doctor becomes pathetic as he looks away. Oh well.

But even before you can process any of this, all hell breaks lose as a bunch of prison guards show up and start shooting. Craziness ensues and in true Jack Hill form, nothing good happens in the end.

Big Doll House is often cited as the first of the women in prison films, and that claim is often disputed by weird Internet people citing earlier examples. I can see their point is some cases, but give me a break. Are these weak-ass examples distributed through Metro Goldwyn Mayer? No. They are not. So yes, it's safe to say that we owe Roger Corman a big pat on the back for introducing the concept to the world, and therefore creating the genre.

So for that, and for introducing us to Pam Grier, and even despite the unfortunate rape scene, I have to give Big Doll House a huge Rumspringa Woo.

-Drew

Spider Baby (1968)

Written and directed by Jack Hill
Starring Lon Chaney Jr., Jill Banner, Beverly Washburn, Sid Haig, Emily Howe and Quinn K. Redeker
Unrated
USA

"Seductive innocence of Lolita...savage hunger of a black widow!" 

Spider Baby is a mess of a movie if you want to get technical about it. But trust me, you don't. This drive-in gem's shortcomings are largely overshadowed by what can only be described as pure charm. Spider Baby is clearly the product of a labor of love, which in my opinion is what separates it from the ridiculous Ed Wood comparisons it has unjustly received in the past. Thankfully I'm not alone as any Google search will reveal.

There's something so good about Spider Baby at times you easily forget it's a horror comedy altogether. The performances are top notch and the characters themselves are so instantly endearing I find myself wondering why Spider Baby isn't mentioned in film school 101. I hadn't seen this film is some ten years or so and I have to say despite the slightly misplaced humor and choppy cinematography, this film has aged quite well. It's cult status is clearly secure, but perhaps it's time to bump this classic up to required viewing. At least amongst MAG followers.

The film centers around the surviving members of the Merrye Family and Bruno, the caretaker who for some reason is devoted to the three, shall we say, demented adult children. Mom and Dad are clearly dead and the gruesome foursome, along with a few unseen aunts and uncles, live in seclusion in a dilapidated mansion that only The Musters would be jealous of.

We learn pretty quickly that Virginia is the bad one. The spider baby. But when her sister Elizabeth walks in and finds that Virginia has killed a hapless mailman, we learn she's not so good either. Instead of  screaming "Holy Jesus Motherfucking Christ" she simply frowns and says "Bruno is going to be mad".

And indeed he is mad. Sort of. Maybe sad is a better word. At any rate no form of punishment is doled out beyond making the girls clean up the blood as he disposes of the body, which he does by lowering it down to the basement (remember the unseen uncles and aunts?).

Ralph, the older brother finds the package the mailman was delivering and gives it to Bruno and now after this insane character development, we find our plot. It turns out the Merrye family is worth a lot of money and some distant cousins are wanting to cash in on the estate. And they're coming tonight for a visit!

Bruno does his best when the guests arrive. He politely explains to them(and to us finally)that the children are retarded due to inbreeding and that's why they don't go to school and stuff. During dinner, which consists of a cat Ralph killed and gross looking vegetables, Bruno further explains that the family line has a degenerative disease and he slightly hints at cannibalism, at least to the audience, which I assume was supposed to remember the people in the basement at this point. The film was originally titled Cannibal Orgy which at least  explains the lyrics in the theme song and some of the rather vague dialogue.

From here the movie gets dark and strange...

 Some die.....

.....and some don't. I wont ruin the ending for you, although it's not much of a surprise that things don't turn out well.

Spider Baby plays like David Lynch directing a 1964 PG version of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. It's also at least to my knowledge one of the earliest horror films to feature a demented family unit as its protagonist, a concept that would go on to be a horror plot line staple in the years to come. It's worth repeating here how well this film stands up 44 years after it's initial release. Flaws and all, Spider Baby comes highly recommended.

- Drew

Switchblade Sisters (1975)

AKA The Jezebels
Directed by Jack Hill
Starring Robbie Lee, Monica Gayle, Joanna Nail
Rated R
USA

"If you go, it's gonna end up baaaaddd!"

Jack Hill is an exploitation legend, responsible for some of the most seminal films of the golden grindhouse era, including the loopy black and white shocker Spider Baby (1968), a quartet of Pam Grier flicks, including classics Coffy (1973) and Foxy Brown (1974), timeless raunch-com The Swinging Cheerleaders (1974) and - thanks to well-heeled booster Quentin Tarantino - his most celebrated work, Switchblade Sisters. A culture-defining, genre-hopping film, Hill's girl-gang epic is at once a vivid reflection on America's Nixon-era malaise and a hysterical, operatic alt-universe violent fantasy. With hotpants.

Starring the remarkable Robbie Lee, a baby-faced pipsqueak who growls and grits her way through the role like a 40's era gangster, it's a tragic romance wrapped up in the violent world of LA street gangs. Lee is Lace, leader of the gangster-moll crew The Dagger Debs. The Debs serve as support - sexual, financial, and occasionally, as weapons smugglers - for The Silver Daggers, your standard-issue, leather-jacketed, low-level drugs and prostitution-pushing teenage thugs.

Seeing as the Daggers and the Debs are, across the  board, white and fresh-faced, Hill wisely paints a bleak backstory for Lace.  The film opens with our doomed heroine sharpening her switchblade and then nailing a rat with a bottle of perfume. In the next room, mom's getting her TV repossessed by some fat lout. Hard times. Mom gives up the rent money to keep the television, and the snickering repo man saunters out. Unfortunately for him, he ends up getting in the elevator with the Dagger-Debs, and they rob him and slash his clothes to ribbons.

The assembled Debs head over to the local burger joint to hang out with their men. We meet Daggers' boss Dom (Asher Brauner), Lace's sneering boyfriend, as well as his crew of mostly nameless and faceless brutes. Showing off her considerable muscle, Lace humilities the gang's resident doormat, Donut (Kitty Bruce, daughter of Lenny), when she asks for a cheeseburger. Interestingly, although she's supposed to the gang's token fat chick, Donut isn't even overweight by today's standards.

While chasing away the law-abiding citizens to make room for the gang, Lace messes with a new chick, Maggie (Joanna Nail), which quickly turns into a knife fight between her and Lace's right-hand girl, Patch (Monica Gayle), so named because she wears a bedazzled eyepatch. Lace is impressed with Maggie's attitude and fighting skills, and asks her if she's in a gang. Which seems likely, since she carries a switchblade and has a belt that turns into some kind of ninja weapon. Amazingly, she's a free agent.

Then the cops show up with the slashed repo guy, and they haul everybody to jail. And the girls all end up in juvie. Maggie gets roughed up by the guards, and since Lace has taken a shine to her, the Debs riot and have a pretty awesome fight that ends in one guard getting tossed into a trashcan, and another one getting a plunger in the face.

Maggie gets out first, so Lace asks her to take a letter to her Dom. She does, and he reads it out loud to the Daggers. Everybody laughs. Later that night, Dom shows up at Maggie's place - she also lives in the projects - and makes violent 70's rape-love to her. And then he smacks her mom around, too. Her mom, by the way, was busy banging the super to pay for the rent. Hard times!

Lace and the gang eventually get out and go back to trashing the school. Lace has no idea, at this point, about the forced hanky panky between Dom and Maggie. The school principal, Mr. Weasel, drops in on Dom to let him know that the Daggers' rival gang, led by a dude named Crab, are transferring to their school, and that he'd rather not have a bloody turf war in his classrooms, if that's at all possible. By the way, no one involved is anywhere close to high school age.

Meanwhile, Patch is jealous of Maggie. Although it's never directly stated, she appears to have a girl-boner for Lace. So she tells her what's up about Maggie and Dom's illicit tryst. Lace doesn't believe her, but later on, at the gang's clubhouse, she sees Mag and Dom talking, and starts to wonder if maybe Patch is right.

Still, she likes the new kid, so Lace announces that Maggie's now in the gang. Patch insists that she has an initiation first, and it's a doozy she has to get the medallion from the rival gang's leader, Crabs. Crabs (Chase Newhart) is a political activist who dresses like a Bay City Roller and wears a plastic Nazi medallion. Always up for a challenge Maggie gussies up and visits Crabs at his headquarters. And she does, indeed, get the necklace, by biting his penis and then bursting through a wall. So she's in.

Things turn ugly when Crab and his goons shoot Dom's little brother in a drive-by and then kidnap his girlfriend for a gang-rape. In retaliation, the Daggers and the Debs decide to stage an ambush at the roller rink.

Before that, however, Lace tells Dom she's pregnant. That does not go well. He tells her to "get rid of it". She mulls over her options.

And then everybody heads to the roller rink. This was a couple years before roller boogie fever, so no disco jams, satin shorts, or rainbow suspenders, sadly. But the girls do start beating Crab's guys with chains, so that's pretty cool, and then everybody pulls out guns and shoots each other. And in the melee, Lace gets kicked in the belly, and Dom gets killed.

After the expected period of mourning and rehabilitation, Maggie takes over as leader of the gang after making Dom's second in command, Hook (Don Stark, AKA Bob from That 70's Show) say that he's a chicken. And then his girlfriend Bunny (pretty Janice Karman) further humiliates him with insults about his penis. So that was pretty emasculating.

Then, given their new girl-powered theme, Maggie changes the name of the gang to the Jezebels. Hungry for revenge for the antics at the roller rink, the newly christened femme-fighters hook up with an all-girl black power gang from Maggie's old neighborhood.

The girls all start training in how to shoot an M16 and shout revolutionary slogans. Lace, her power now severely diminished, shows up to make an awesome-but-disingenuous speech. And then, the war is on.

The next day the girls start to riot outside of Crab's headquarters Lace wears some kind of metal Princeess Leia buns. Then the black chicks show up with a tank, and everybody goes bananas. One guy has a sweater with elephants on it, and another guy wears a bowtie. It's all very crazy.

The girls end up slaughtering Crab and most of his gang, but Maggie figures out that Lace tipped him off at roller rink. Back at their clubhouse, Lace and Patch try to convince the other girls it was really Maggie - they even put a cigarette our in her belly button to maker confess - But the other girls don't buy it.

Obviously, given the title of the film, there's only one way to settle this - knife fight!

Part Shakespearian tragedy, part doomed romance, part women in prison potboiler, part blaxploitation flick, part teen melodrama, and part pitch-black comedy, Switchblade Sisters is an unabashed classic of throat-grabbing exploitation cinema. It's no wonder that Quentin Tarantino resurrected the film for a theatrical revival in the mid 1990's, since it's clear that he nabbed a good portion of his aesthetic from this film. From the frequently bizarre dialogue (Chicken ass?), to the loopy costumes (who wears denim cut-offs to a shoot-out?), to Robbie Lee's unforgettable performance, Switchblade Sisters is pure grindhouse gold, the hotpants girl-gang flick to end all hotpants girl-gang flicks. Don't miss it.

- Ken McIntyre