Help Wanted, Female (1968)

Directed by John Hayes
Starring Sebastian Gregory and several long-gone starlets
Unrated
USA

"I did have the desire to....skin her alive."

Help Wanted, Female, is such a raw, primitive film that you'd assume it was made by some regional nutjob from Nowheresville with a few extra bucks and a head full of greasy bad ideas. Shockingly, director John Hayes was already a decade - and one Academy Award nomination (!) - into his career when he created this bruising bit of no-budget sexploitation. Therefore, this head-spinning roughie is ugly and weird on purpose, like Yngwie Malmsteen playing a Black Flag tune, or Baudelaire writing dirty limericks.

Like everything else in the 60's, Help Wanted Female is a cautionary tale, one that warns cocky middle-aged men to stay away from both ugly hookers and massive doses of LSD. Check and check, Mr. Hayes!

Jo Jo, a groovy chick in granny glasses and a zebra-print mini-dress, runs into some shlub in a parking lot somewhere, while she drags an armful of books around. They get to yapping, and she offers him a ride home. He takes it, and the next thing you know, she's back at his pad, making sweet late-60's love to him.

But after he falls into a deep and satisfying post-coital slumber, Jo Jo rummages through his stuff, pocketing his watch and the contents of his wallet before attempting to skulk off into the night.

Unfortunately, she drops one of her books on the way out, waking the fella. He gets wise to her hoodwink and blocks the door, preventing her from escaping. But little does he know, this chick's a karate expert! Jo Jo kung-fu's him in the back of the skull and lays a bunch of extra haymakers on him to make sure he stays down for awhile. Then she scoops up her ill-begotten loot and splits.

Jo Jo  heads over to some warehouse (it's supposed to be her apartment, I think) where Luana, a very hard-looking blonde, smokes and dances clumsily to some choppy cha-cha tune blaring away on a hi-fi.  Apparently, the two are roommates, and mug-faced Luana is a hooker. Jo Jo grouses about how she wants the two of 'em to escape somewhere far away from Johns and suckers, but Luana scoffs at her and bails.

Luana visits her trick, Mr. Gregory (Sebastian Gregory), a goofball with a pipe and a robe and a space-age bachelor pad. They haggle over her price for awhile, and then she sucks on his fingers. It's pretty gross.

While she slobbers on his digits, he calls her a "brat bitch", which may be a term of endearment between these two weirdoes. Eventually, Luana dances for him - fully clothed and just as awkwardly as she did back at her place - while he pops LSD-soaked sugarcubes like they were...well, like something that wasn't laced with a powerful hallucinogen. She does an endless striptease and then Mr. Gregory tells her - via flashback - about his old girlfriend, Barbara. One night while they were frolicking near the fireplace, he burned his hand, and Babs really dug it. She figured out rather quickly that pain was her thing, and encouraged Mr. Gregory to slash her in the guts with a knife. Which he does. And then he fucks her, while she's still bleeding.

 Back in the present, Mr. G and Luana build a fort with the bed sheets, and he starts riffing to her about some of his other sex n' violence romps. Like the time he and Barbara picked up a fledgling actress-slash-hitchhiker named Tina and convinced her to come home with them so that they could shoot some publicity stills for her.

They pretend to shoot the photos, and once they've got Tina naked, Barbara stabs her in the belly, and she staggers around the apartment, bleeding to death. And then she runs herself a bath, for some reason. And then the dude slashes her throat. RIP Tina. They bury her somewhere and decide to lay low for awhile. Gregory worries that they'll get caught, but Barbara assures them that their neighbor is too busy watching porno loops on his 8mm projector to pay any attention to their killing spree.

Later on that evening, for no good reason, Mr. Gregory uses a plastic bag and a belt to suffocate/strangle Barbara. Then he dresses up her corpse and takes it to the beach, Weekend at Bernie's style. Then he brings her home and...well, it looks like he carves her up and eats her. Luana doesn't believe any of this garbage. Well, not until she starts snooping around his kitchen and finds some nasty, Dahmer-esque surprises in the fridge. She calls Jo Jo at her karate school, but she's no help whatsoever. Luana manages to clock him in the head and make her escape, but for long?

Naturally, Mr. Gregory shows up at Jo Jo and Wanda's weird apartment/empty storage facility looking for revenge, and three battle it out. Meanwhile, the cops show up at Mr. Gregory's - Wanda tipped them off to his recent foray into murder, mutilation, and cannibalism - but they find nothing out of the ordinary. So, what the fuck just happened here? Was it all a hallucination? And if it was, just who was hallucinating? Mr. Gregory? Luana? The audience? Hard to say. The climax is all double-jointed strippers and balloons getting popped and guys getting stabbed. And then they pull the old it-was-all-a-dream gag on us. Curses!

Alright, so the ending is a cheap rip-off, Luana is decidedly un-pretty, and even in its most coherent moments, Help Wanted Female is senseless. Still, this is balls-out 60's gutter-trash filmmaking, full of wrong-headed notions, histrionic over-acting, weird characters, blood, sex, madness, and gratuitous kung-fu. Of the three female leads, Jo Jo and Barbara (no one except for Gregory is identified, so it's anybody's guess who's who in this mess) are both suitably fetching, so two out of three ain't bad, and Sebastian Gregory is perfect as the middle-aged perv in way over his head. Forcefully sleazy and hilariously overwrought, Help Wanted Female is well worth seeking out, a grubby little gem from the golden days of low-rent grindhouse garbage.

Help Wanted Female is available from Something Weird Video.

- Ken McIntyre

Teenage Exorcist (1991)

Directed by Grant Austin Waldman
Starring Brinke Stevens, Eddie Deezen, Robert Quarry
Unrated

"Look deep into my eyes. What do you see?"
"Too much mascara?"

The first thing we probably need to address here is that there aren't actually any teenagers in this film, exorcist or otherwise. Initially, the pivotal role of the spazzy pizza boy was written for a teenage girl, but those plans were scrapped along the way, and the role went to rubber-faced doofus Eddie Deezen. This last-minute shake-up rendered the film's title useless, but the posters were already printed, so what the hell.

Teenage Exorcist was one of the few screenplays written by still in-demand 80's scream-queen Brinke Stevens. Stevens also stars in the film as nerdy, uptight grad student Diane, who rents a creaky old mansion (producer Fred Olen Ray's house, a frequent location for many of his films) from creepy Michael Berryman for $50.

Naturally, the house is haunted, in this case by the spirit of the former owner, one Baron DesSade (!). As such, as soon as Diane starts snooping around the joint, scary stuff happens. There's a snake in her closet! Or is there?  And then an invisible man squeezes the milk!

And then she eats bloody lettuce! Diane survives these initial ghostly assaults, but calls her sister Sally (Elena Sahagun, who does actually look like she could be Stevens' biological sibling) and begs her to come over and keep the frightened college girl company. And the lights go out, so she goes downstairs to the basement to hit the circuit breaker. When she gets down there, she sees Satan lurking by the furnace.

And then her sister and her dopey husband Mike (Jay Richardson, Bikini Chain Gang) drop by to check on her, and she has somehow transformed into a lingerie-clad, man-eating vixen.

Sally assumes Diane's blood sugar is off, and offers to make some guacamole, which seems a little random. Diane uses the opportunity to hit on Mike, but he manages to wriggle out of her silky web of seduction. Then Diane grabs a chainsaw and chases her sister around with it.

And then Sally goes to take a shower and Satan scrubs her back.

Eventually, Sally and Mike figure out what's happening. They call a priest (Robert Quarry), but he accidentally turns Diane into a dog. And then she goes down to the cellar and transforms into a leather-clad dominatrix. Unsure of how to proceed, the priest calls the monsignor, but accidentally calls a pizza place instead. Dopey pizza boy Eddie (Deezen) shows up with $50 worth of pies, and they dupe him into fighting the demon.

She takes him downstairs and introduces him to Satan, They seem to get along ok. But Satan wants to sacrifice Eddie so that he can live forever, and he bashes pizza boy on the skull. Long story short, Diane ends up having slipper-sex with him, so he is useless for a virgin sacrifice. Satan decides to go with Mike instead, even though he's not a virgin. Might as well. A not-so-epic battle between good and evil - complete with a handful of zombies - ensues.

True, Teenage Exorcist lacks a plot, has no production values, and appears to have been thrown together in one afternoon. But it also boasts a very likeable cast, moves along with speedfreak abandon, and features a fully-ripe Brinke Stevens in revealing clothing for nearly all of it's running time. If you've seen any of Fred Olen Ray's other films - Evil Toons, Star Slammer, Bikini Drive-in, etc - than you know exactly what to expect here. Mindless 80's VHS-style trash, perfect for a lazy afternoon of poppin' boners and cheap laughs.

- Ken McIntyre

Angel (1984)

Directed by Robert Vincent O'Neill
Starring Donna Wilkes, Dick Shawn, Susan Tyrell
Rated R
USA

"It's pretty lean out there tonight."

One of the most quintessentially 80’s exploitation films ever, Angel tells the tawdry tale of Molly (Donna Wilkes), a 15 year old high school student abandoned by her mother and forced into prostitution to pay for her private school tuition. Absurd, over the top, and self-consciously goofy, it’s part teenage-wasteland melodrama, part gritty action thriller, and part pitch-black comedy. And quite often, it attempts to be all three at once.

Angel was written and directed by Robert Vincent O’Neil, who previously penned the bug-eyed, ultra-violent Vice Squad (1982), an unforgettable and unforgivable piece of cinematic slime starring Wings Hauser as a deranged pimp who occasionally beats his girls to death. Angel mines similar material – and also takes place almost exclusively on Hollywood Boulevard – but aims for a lighter touch.

Molly’s father is currently MIA, and presumed dead. Her mother – well, she ran off with some dude and has no plans to come back anytime soon. And so, he forms a surrogate family with the denizens of the flophouse where she lives. Susan Tyrell is Solly, Molly’s bizarre, cigar-chomping landlady and mother figure. 70’s character actor Dick Shawn is Mae, Solly’s flouncing transvestite lover and Molly’s best friend/ father figure. And the other whores are her adopted sisters. By day, Molly’s a distracted but committed honor student in a fancy-pants prep school; at night, she’s blowing dudes for $20 and trying to stay out of jail and out of the clutches of mysterious hooker-killer that’s slicing through all of her friends. And that’s life in 1984, man.

If there’s one thing this movie has plenty of, it’s colorful characters. Like the Charlie Chaplin dude on the boardwalk who does yo yo tricks - that seems like a pretty random mash-up, but whatever - who is friends with all the teenage hookers. He has a special shine for one of 'em, though - Headband Girl. In one heart-melting scene, he gives his secret crush a toy top, and she promises to hang out with him after work. So, you pretty much know right away that we're never going to see Headband Girl again.

Moments later, she is absconded by the Hooker Slayer. He stabs her in the guts in an alley, and then drags her home and fucks her corpse. Ain't no love in the heart of the city, man.

Her best friend Lana (Graem McGavin) gets jacked by the necro as well, as Angel discovers when she brings back a loudmouth pedo back to the fuck-shack she shares with her.

Angel gets interrogated about the murder by Lt. Andrews (Cliff Gorman), who gives her the tough love she so desperately needs. Eventually, she fingers the psycho during a line-up and he goes berserk, grabbing a cop's gun and shooting everything in sight. He makes a hasty getaway into the night.

Meanwhile, the Lt. visits Angel and discovers what he's expected all along - she has no stroked-out mom. She actually lives alone because she was abandoned by her mother - she has the letter from mom memorized, and recites it, between tears, to the cop. Oscar moment!

Angel gets a gun from the dude at the fried chicken stand and the creaky old cowboy teaches her how to use it. She figures she's going to have shoot the hooker killer herself. While she's out prowling the boulevard, the asshole jock from her high school and his two toadie friends spot her. The grab her and throw her in the backseat of their car. Of course, Angel/Molly has a nasty surprise for her schoolmates. She pulls her pistol on ‘em and Rick pees his pants. It's a big mess.

And then, out of nowhere, shower scene! With full bush!

It's actually a convenient excuse for Molly to eavesdrop on a couple catty girls gossiping about her streetwalkin' escapades on Hollywood Boulevard. Her guidance counselor gets wind of the rumors, and Molly's double-life begins to unravel.

She visits her new buddy the cop for advice. It's another Oscar moment sorta deal.

Meanwhile, Molly's counselor drops by her house to visit her non-existent mom. Mae tries to cover for her, but somehow, the counselor sees through his ruse. He explains her situation, and she seems alright with it. They even chat good-naturedly about dresses. And then she splits. Moments later, however, the psycho - now dressed up like a Hari Krishna, shows up to carve Mae an extra hole, and one of the 80's more ridiculous apartment brawls ensues.

Long story short, the tranny gets snuffed, and in one of the most iconic scenes of the 80’s, Angel takes to the Boulevard, pistol in hand, to hunt down the psycho. Blood and mayhem soon follows.

While it does suffer from an uneven tone, Angel is nonetheless a crucial piece of 80’s exploitation. Aggressively weird, unnecessarily schmaltzy and thoroughly over the top, it’s like a 1970’s TV movie of the week gone completely off the rails. Donna Wilkes – 25 at the time of shooting – does an admirable job at essaying a completely ridiculous character, and her supporting cast – especially the lipstick smeared Dick Shawn and perennial creep John Diehl as the killer – all take chomp the scenery with ravenous glee.

An even campier semi-sequel, Avenging Angel (1985), followed a year later. Both are essential for fans of cheeseball 80’s trash.

- Ken McIntyre

Night of the Cat (1973)

Directed by Jim Cinque
Starring Kathy Allen, Bob Pierce, George Oakley
Unrated
USA

"What do you think this is, a strawberry festival?"

The 70's were littered with oddball outsider musicians - reckless dead-enders like The Shaggs, Rodd Keith, and Wildman Fischer, whose enthusiasm far outweighed their talents. Quite often, this collision of far-out ideas and sub-par musicianship would result in exquisitely awful performances, so bad they would transcend the very notion of taste and quality and become something else, entirely - a sort of sublime anti-music that only the truly enlightened - or the extremely patient and generous - could really 'get'.  And so it was with low-budget cinema in the 1970's, as well. Although many examples have been lost to the ages, that heady decade spewed up a number of dizzyingly inept feature films from various non-Hollywood locales, many of them in the south - Florida, Tennessee, North and South Carolina - wherein big-dreaming would-be moguls picked up cameras, hired local riff-raff for crews, and trolled the local dinner theaters and summer stocks for fledgling talent to bring their fevered visions to life. Witness the singular thrills of home-brewed nonsense like Crypt of Dark Secrets, Pick-Up, and the immortal Bat Pussy for a few unforgettable examples.

 The frequently head-spinning Night of the Cat is firmly in that Outsider Cinema camp as well. In fact, it may be the most outside of 'em all, simply because it seems to have no idea at all that it's failing on nearly every level. I have no idea where director Jim Cinque is these days or, indeed, if he's still walking the Earth. But if he is, I'll bet that he's still telling people about that awesome film he made on that one lost weekend in 1973. And goddamn it, he's right. It may not be for the reasons he intended, but Night of the Cat is, quite literally, awesome.

 Kathy Allen - a compact, moon-faced blonde with a blank-eyed stare - stars as Claire, a dopy chick with a missing sister and nothing better to do but wander around looking for her. Sadly, her sis was gunned down by local thugs when she ran afoul of their drugs and prostitution ring, and now it's up to Claire to avenge her sister and bring down the notorious Charlotte, North Carolina mob.

 First, though, Claire has flashbacks to better days with her sister. I believe that these are supposed to be childhood flashbacks, since they're frolicking in the park and riding on swings, but these scenes were clearly shot the same day as everything else, since they're wearing the same clothes and hairstyles as they were five minutes ago.  But, you know, it's a dream. Anything goes in dreams.

 Cut to: evil Mr. Demmons, who gets a call from a certain Mr. Salvatori while lounging around by himself in an empty restaurant/strip-club. A topless chick hands brings the phone in for him. It' clearly not attached to anything, but ok. Sal wants to know if the hit went ok. Demmons assures him that Janet is dead, and they won't have any further problems because "the cops are in my pocket." And then another topless girl shows up to take his unplugged phone away.

Oh, and then there's a pretty sweet strip scene, but it was clearly shot for a different movie entirely.

 Tom (George Oakley) is a local news reporter (and, apparently, a swinger, since he's got two girlfriends) who's been trying to bust Demmon's crime ring wide open. Seems they kidnap young women, take them to some secret 'clinic' to hook them on drugs, and then force them into prostitution to pay for their habits. Janet was one such victim, but she escaped, briefly, and was working with Tom to get enough evidence together the nail the dastardly duo. Unfortunately, they figured it out and snuffed her. Undaunted, Tom vows to fight on, and reveals Demmons' secret weakness - cats. He can't stand 'em.

 Demmon's goons bust into Tom's place and slap his galpal Jenny and the other chick around. Then they drag them upstairs to, presumably, do horrible sexual things to them. Tom shows up later, discovers them, and makes an "Oh no" face. Then he goes back to work. You'd have to, eventually. Meanwhile, Claire learns Karate. And also ballet. And she does some calisthenics.

And then Nick, a short, loud-mouthed, mustachioed dude - flanked by a bunch of weirdos, including a very fat man in a too-tight t-shirt named Doug - shows up at Demmon's place. He wanders around his living room looking at furniture and going "Wow!" for 10 or so minutes.  Then he yells at  Demmons about the reporter. They're both in the same mob, apparently. Seems valid.  Then he gets on the phone and starts yelling at some guy about antiques.

 Demmons is pretty pissed about all of this, as evidenced in the scene where he randomly pushes a girl into the pull and then yanks her back out. Then he starts yelling at his henchmen:
"What are you doing about this reporter?" He barks. "What do you think this is, a strawberry festival?"
Haha, what?

 Right after his tirade, he spots a kitten and freezes, like Eric Von Zipper in the Beach Party movies. Doug - the fat guy - picks up the cat and chokes it to death! Yikes! Then he goes over to Tom's house, drags him into the bathtub - in his PJ's, no less - and drowns him.

The end.

 No, it's not the end, because Claire shows up in a brunette wig and a black jumpsuit, presumably to scare Demmons with her sorta-kinda cat-like looks. Doug nabs her first though, and punches her right in the face. She wakes up tied to a bed as one of the goons menaces her with a switchblade, while uttering every cat-related pun he can think of: "Enjoy your nap?", "This kitty seems rather tame", "Time to skin a cat", etc. What a cut-up!

She manages wriggle free - it takes her forever - and she karate-chops a couple of the bad guys and makes her escape. Then she goes over to Tom's house to find his notebook full of evidence,but she runs into Bob the cop, who's there for the same thing. They tussle, and Bob threatens to spank her, which seems a little sexist. Then there's a very long, screechy, and pointless car chase. I'm not even sure who the guy is. I can tell you that, at one point, he throws his gun at the cops. Classic.

 Meanwhile, Claire busts into the "clinic", roughs up and evil nurse, and frees all the druggy chicks. Then she burns the place down. This is demonstrated by a brief shot of a fireplace. Then she heads over to Demmons' joint to lay down some more justice. She kung-fu's all of his toadies, including that tub o'lard Doug (she kicks him down the stairs!), and then she squares off with the boss for an extremely awkward battle royale.

How's it all end? Magnificently.

With its hilariously wooden acting, random insert shots, chainsaw editing, badly synched sound, washed-out color, cock-eyed camera work, ridiculous script, and non-existent production values, Night of the Cat bares no resemblance whatsoever to a good, or even a 'real', movie. It's more like a boozy lost weekend caught on film. Still, there is something compulsively watchable about the whole mess, a can-do spirit that lifts this travesty out of the cinematic gutter and transforms it into some kind of primitive folk art. It's good-natured ineptness makes otherwise grievous errors in logic and coherence forgivable, and eventually, all that flat delivery, all the awkward moments, and all the incorrect camera angles develop into a seamless, perfectly imperfect movie-watching experience. Even if you hate it, you'll love it.

- Ken McIntyre

Moonshine County Express (1977)

Directed by Gus Trikonis
Starring Claudia Jennings, Maureen McCormack, John Saxon
Rated PG
USA

"You just wait around here and I'll go get myself killed."

Before he settled into a long  and winding career in basic cable (Baywatch, Hercules, Sea Quest, Viper), director Gus Trikonis carved out an impressive resume of 70's drive-in trash: Five the Hard Way (1969), Supercock (1975), Swinging Barmaids (1975), The Student Body (1976), The Evil (1978), and of course, Moonshine County Express, his fast and furious entry into the then wildly popular hicksploitation cycle.

It should be pointed out that in 1977, when Moonshine Country Express was released, Burt Reynolds was bigger than Jesus. For all intents and purposes, this is a Burt Reynolds movie, only on one-tenth the budget, and with 60's sci-fi star John Saxon filling in for the mustache. All the Burtsploitation elements are there: booze, dirty cops, fast cars, and a fistful of gum-snappin', back-talkin' broads in cut-offs.

The story - slight as it is - involves a trio of backwoods beauties - Dot (Susan Howard), Betty (70's grindhouse superstar Claudia Jennings, RIP) and Sissy Hammer (Marsha Brady herself, Maureen McCormack), three sisters orphaned when their daddy - and his moonshine still - are all blown to smithereens by mean ol' Jack Starkey (William "Cannon" Conrad, RIP), the town asshole, and Daddy Hammer's chief competitor in the 'shine running game.

Things look bad for the girls until they meet Daddy's lawyer, who reads them a letter promising the girls a fortune, right under their noses, in the backyard. Dead dad suggests they pick up a shovel, and start digging. And so they do.

The girls find the stash of prohibition-era whiskey he'd stowed in a makeshift cellar behind their shack. There's enough there for them to sell and move out of the mountain, but they'll need some hired muscle to help 'em protect the stuff.

Naturally, smooth-talkin' shine-runner JB (John Saxon) gets recruited for the gig.
Good thing, too, because once ol Starkey gets wind of the girls' new business, he sends his boys over to shoot their shack full of holes. Them bastards even got their hound dog. Dog slayin' sumbitches!

A Bugs Bunney-esque, banjo-driven turf war breaks out.

Starkey's goons take out Dotty's customers and co-conspirators in various acts of extreme violence - one guy's store gets blown up, with him in it; a mechanic has the car he's working on dropped on him - until there's no one left 'cept for JB, the girls, and a bitchin' bright yellow muscle car.

And then Starkey's goon runs them off the road, and they don't even have the fuckin' car anymore. Somebody finds a truck, and they decide to try and smuggle all the booze out of town under the cover of night.

Unfortunately, permanently soused Uncle Bill (cowboy star Dub Taylor) finds their stash and stumbles into town to spill the beans. Starkey's men overrun the joint and tie Sissy to a post. That part was awesome. Marsha, in tiny cut-offs, tied to a post! Who knows what they planned on doing, but luckily Betty shows up to shoot a few of 'em in the guts and blow up a few more with sticks of dynamite. They manage to get the hooch out, and a run for the county line - chased by cops and bad guys - ensues.

Moonshine County Express revels in violence, but, strangely enough, it skimps completely on nudity, shattering the hopes of 70's era sleazebags hoping for a glimpse of Marsha's muffins. Luckily, what the film lacks in celebrity skin, it makes up for with gunfights and gusto - 90% of the movie is either high speed car chases down dusty back roads, or over the top bullet ballets. The cast is full of primo 70's character actors, too. Besides the already-mentioned leads, be on the lookout for apple-cheeked, platinum blonde B-flick goddess Candice Rialson and Len "Uncle Leo" Lesser, in smaller roles. Sure, John Saxon is no Bandit, but still, Moonshine County Express is drenched in that same mid 70's stink. Imagine, a world where all you needed to outrun the long arm of the law was a faster car, where selling booze you made in your own basement was a viable career choice, and where a braless, barefoot Marsha Brady brandished a rifle. That's the world on offer here.  And who wouldn't want to spend some time there?

- Ken McIntyre