Beneath the Valley of the Ultra Vixens (1979)

Directed by Russ Meyer
Starring Kitten Natividad, Ann Marie, Sharon Hill, June Mack
Rated X
USA

"I don't eat pussy. It's un-American."

Unless you count 2001's glorified tit-loop Pandora Peaks - and no one does, really - Beneath the Valley of the Ultra Vixens is Russ Meyer's last official film. There are conflicting reports why. Some say Meyer felt that he'd already gone as far as he could go with his sex n' violence epics without tipping over into hardcore territory, something he vowed never to do. While it is true that Ultra Vixens is as close as he ever went to showing full-on penetration, sex scenes were hardly the biggest attraction to Meyer's films. This hitting-the-wall-of-X argument seems a little too convenient, especially since Russ himself announced his next proposed film - The Jaws of Vixen - at the end of this one. He'd also announced a fistful of other film projects around this period of time, as well, including Up the Valley of the Beyond, Blitzen, Vixen, and Harry, Mondo Topless II, and the Breast of Russ Meyer, an often threatened but never produced twelve hour videography/auto-biography. More likely, Meyer just couldn't raise the necessary funds to get any of these films off the ground. Certainly, the market had changed quite a bit at the dawn of the video age, and sexploitation films were being made on a sliver of the average Meyer budget by part-time pornographers like Chuck Vincent and Ed Hansen.

At any rate, this premature end to Russ's filmmaking resume did not do the old boy much harm. He made millions in the 80's and 90's selling his films to the home video market, and this more leisurely lifestyle afforded him the opportunity to spend more time doing what he loved best - banging big-breasted women. But as career finales go, Ultra Vixens is a bit of a letdown, especially in light of his two previous efforts, Supervixens (1975) and Up! (1976). Both of those films were drive-in classics, filled with epically beautiful women, two-fisted macho men, and an extraordinary amount of gratuitous nudity and violence. They also had intricate, metaphor-laden plots. Sure, neither one made much sense, but it was obvious that Meyer had some specific vision in mind when he made them. In contrast, Ultra Vixens seems trite and episodic. Written by frequent Meyer collaborator Roger Ebert, it's a thinly-veiled statement of Meyer's inherent homophobia stretched into 92 minutes of grinding monologues and pointless softcore sex scenes. On the plus side, it's absolutely the best place to see Kitten Nativadid strut her stuff, since she's in nearly every scene, usually naked, and on pneumatic sexual overdrive. It's also the best place to ogle the jaw-dropping Ann Marie (AKA Kathy Ayers), a truly gravity-defying freak of nature/science. Gorgeous and impossible all at once, Ann Marie is worth the price of admission all on her own. It is a pity that her filmic resume amounts to this, a cameo in Supervixens, and the little-seen '76 sexploiter Swinging Sorority Girls, because I could pretty much watch Ann Marie do her thing everyday. Just not in this movie.

Russ's cinematic arch nemesis, elusive ex-Nazi Martin Borman (Henry Rowland, RIP) is alive and well in Beneath the Valley of the Ultra-Vixens. This time around, he's the owner of a funeral home. As our story opens, we get a glimpse into his particular sexual dysfunction - he likes to cover himself up with a sheet and fuck chicks in coffins. The chick in question is busty blonde radio evangelist Miss Eufala Roop (Ann Marie), who mounts Mr. Borman in his favorite casket after a vigorous game of Pong on her Odyssey console. Hardcore video game nerds will be confused as to what parts to freeze-frame when they furiously masturbate to this scene.

Cut to: The Man from Small Town, USA (long-standing Meyer troupe member Stuart Lancaster, RIP), who introduces all of the film's character's in one of Russ Meyer's most long-winded, tongue twisting monologues. As it is with most of Russ's "Small towns", the population hovers at around a dozen people, at least half of which are oversexed women with painfully inflated chests.

Lamar (Ken Kerr), is our tragic hero. He doesn't want any problems, really. It's late at night, and he's got to do the books. And that's exactly what he's doing, carefully crunching numbers at the kitchen table, using his new-fangled beeping calculator. His bosomy wife Lavonia (Kitten Natividad, acting exactly like an alley cat overdosing on catnip) waits for him in bed, but when he ignores her fully-nude come-ons, she gets positively aggressive, climbing under the table to slobber on his crotch while he works. Lamar can take it no longer. He bends Lavonia over the table and forcibly sodomizes her. That's his thing, you see. Lavonia is not happy about this rear-entry bullshit, so she throws on a mini-dress and takes off into the night, presumably to find a bag of ice to sit down on.

Well, first she stops by the junkyard, where Small Town's "Garbage Czar", Mr. Peterbuilt (Pat Wright, Bikini Car Wash Company) bones her in a more socially acceptable manner. In the front seat of his garbage truck.

The message of this scene, and indeed the whole film, is that Lamar's predilection for butt sex is the source of all his problems. If he could only learn to "fuck straight", as our narrator suggests, everything would be ok. So, let's see if he can be pummeled and girl-raped enough to suit Meyer's heterosexual ideal by the end of this story, shall we?

While lonely Lamar snoozes and Lavonia exercises her vagina, Eufala Roop is busy at the Rio Dio 100,000 Watts AM Christian radio station, practicing what she refers to as 'Radio Healing'. Just put your afflicted body part against the speaker, and she'll fix it right up for you. Seems valid.

The next morning, everything's back to normal. Lamar heads off to work at Junkyard Sal's, while Lavonia goes skinny-dipping and bangs Rhett (Steve Tracey, Class Reunion) a 14 year old kid who was swimming the backstroke in the creek. He was relatively easy to find, since his penis was sticking up above the water like a periscope. Lamar, once again, tries to stay out of trouble, but after a hard day of whatever it is you do at a junkyard, he is called into Sal's office/boudoir to work some overtime. If you know what I mean, and I think you do.

A word, before we continue, about June Mack, AKA Junkyard Sal. Mack was not, by any stretch, one of Meyer's classic beauties. A 250 lb cosmetic surgery addict, Mack was a notorious and well-known figure on the seedier streets of Hollywood, both for her specialty modeling spreads - readily available in grubby mags catering to plus sized women - and for her lucrative phone sex service. Despite her rather braying performance in UltraVixens, Mack was known far and wide for her uncanny ability to bring men to trembling orgasms via the telephone. Her phone sex business was so lucrative that she zipped around town in a purple Rolls Royce, dressed in elaborate dresses and wigs, her 66 Double G bras stuffed with thousands of dollars in cash. Clearly, Miss Mack was a woman who knew how to party, which is probably what attracted Russ Meyer. That and her gigantic tits, I imagine. Sadly, this much larger than life LA fixture - an actual, living, breathing Ultra Vixen - was gunned down in the street in 1984, the victim of multiple murderer William Mentzer, an "occult superstar" tenuously linked to Charlie Manson, the Son of Sam, and the Zodiac Killer.

Umm, sorry to bring everybody down. June Mack, RIP. Now, back to the antics.

Lamar allows Sal to sit on his face - she pretty much swallows it whole - and in exchange, she lets him bang her in the ass. That seems fair to me. However, halfway through his backdoor romp, he is interrupted by his two idiot co-workers, Tyrone (Aram Katcher, RIP) and Badger (Don Scarborough), who were peeping through the window the entire time. Lamar kicks their asses all over the junkyard. Tyrone, being a coward by nature, bleeds yellow. Badger, a jealous and petty man, bleeds green. At least, that's they idea. They really just look like they're spitting up baby food.

Sal's had enough of everybody's hijinks, so she fires the lot of 'em. Good thing Lavonia - after an eventful visit with a traveling lingerie salesman and a "Spanish Made Simple" book - has taken up stripping at a Mexican gentleman's club. Of course, Lamar doesn't know this - yet. But take it from a man who's been fired from every job he's ever had: a strip club and a cold beer is a fine way to dull the sting of sudden dismissal. Lamar heads into bordertown nudie bar The Other Ball to drown his sorrows, only to find Lavonia shaking her ample maracas for the local riff raff. Here's the thing, though - Lamar doesn't recognize her. This is possibly because she's facing him, and he's generally an ass-first sort of guy. Seizing her chance to fix her fucked-up hubby, she slips the dope a Mickey. He immediately passes out, and she drags him into a squalid bedroom upstairs, where she proceeds to tie him to the bed and sleep-bang him, hoping that this will somehow cure him of his anal obsession.

After she's finished with him - and after he's dutifully flooded the old "black sock" - Lavonia shocks him awake with smelling salts. She jabbers away in excited Spanish, convincing the groggy and confused Lamar that he's with another woman, and her angry Mexican husband - and his death squad posse - are due back home any minute now. Miraculously, this bullshit seems to work. Lamar dives out the window and gets out of Dodge.

Unfortunately, by the time Lamar gets home, Lavonia is already fucking Peterbuilt again. Lamar catches them in the act but Lavonia thinks quickly, burning Peterbuilt's balls with a lightbulb and trying to convince Lamar he'd forced himself on her. Even a dimwit like Lamar can see through that, so he drags his wayward wife to see Dr Lavender (Robert Pearson), Small Town's resident marriage counselor/dentist. As his name would imply, the kindly Doc is a flouncing, Rip Taylor-esque caricature of a gay man, complete with a lisp and a cigarette holder.

Lamar explains his problem to the doc. Lavender is sure he can get to the bottom of things, but first he has to clean Lavonia's teeth. This affords his gorgeous assistant, Nurse Flovilla Thatch (Sharon Hill, perhaps best known as the nurse zombie in Dawn of the Dead), the opportunity to give Lamar a thorough check-up.

This turns out to be a bad idea for everybody. Dr Lavender, presumably because he doesn't like girls, intentionally hurts Lavonia when he's working on her teeth. Meanwhile, Lamar throws Flovilla on the desk and butt-rapes her. When she protests, he laments, "Why can't a woman be more like a man?"

Hearing this cry for help, Doc Lavender decides they should all change places. Flovilla busts out a double-dildo and gets to work on Lavonia, while Lavender rips off his trousers and attempts to bone Lamar. Lamar calls the doctor a 'fag' and runs for it. Naturally, he ends up hiding in the closet. Where else? While the girls pleasure one another in a spectacularly shot girl-girl scene (if only Russ could've lingered there, instead of cross-cutting with the Tom and Jerry bullshit, he might have been able to pass this whole mess off as erotica!), the Doc uses a series of cartoon weapons - crowbar, mallet, shotgun, chainsaw - to get Lamar out of the closet. When he finally rips the door off, Lamar hits him so hard his toupee falls off. He bleeds pink, natch. Then Lamar yanks his wife off of the nurse and splits.

Desperate, Lamar drives over to see Sister Eufala Roop,hoping that perhaps she can save him with her considerable healing powers. She throws him into a bathtub and baptizes/fucks him, her giant boobs clanging against his head like church bells. It seems to do the trick, and he literally runs home to his wife.

As you might expect, given her track record, she's busy having sex with Peterbuilt, although he's showing signs of boredom with this particular routine.

To make an extremely long story slightly shorter, Lamar comes home, punches out Peterbuilt, and satisfies his wife and her vagina.

Oh, and then there's a gratuitous Russ Meyer cameo.

And then there's a gratuitous Ushi Digard (Supervixens, CB Hustlers, The Car Hops) cameo, as our yappy narrator slips back into his Supervixens role as a chicken-fucking farmer with a hot Austrian mail-order bride.

If just about any other filmmaker created Ultra Vixens, it would be their high water mark, their mesmerizing, desert-bound, all-nude masterpiece. But some other fucker did not make it, Russ Meyer did, and for a giant like him, this is clearly one of his lower-tier films. To call a Russ Meyer film tedious feels like heresy, but unfortunately, it fits the bill here. While it is still worth a look - pants on or off, your choice - for the breathtaking charms of Ann Marie, the sunny 70's supergirl beauty of Sharon Hill, and the power-packed fuck n' roll energy of Kitten Natividad, all the bullshit in-between is a slog to get through, and the homophobic vibe threaded throughout the film just feels square. A rare miss for the King of Skin Cinema, and a badly timed one, as well. I guess the moral here is: Make every film as if it's your last. Because it may very well be.

- Ken McIntyre

Frankenhooker (1990)

Directed by Frank Henenlotter
Starring Patty Mullen, James Lorinz
Rated R
USA

"Wanna date? Looking for some action? Got any money?"

Frank Henenlotter was one at the apex of his curious career in exploitation when he made this seminal slice of 80's splatter-comedy. One of the all-time great NYC filmmakers, Henenlotter made his bones with 1982's Basket Case, and exceptionally twisted little tale of two Siamese twins, separated against their will, who get revenge on the doctors who split them up. One of the twins just happens to be a monster who lives in a basket. Basket Case was a gleeful celebration of the Times Square grindhouse experience. Filmed in the bowels of the city during the height of New York's love affair with sleazy cinema, the micro-budgeted film became an instant horror classic, and propelled Henenlotter from eccentric underground filmmaker to horror hero. He followed Basket Case with 1988's outrageous Brain Damage, an addiction allegory starring a wisecracking brain tumor, and Basket Case 2, a tongue in cheek sequel loaded with bizarre latex beasties. Henenlotter came up with the basic concept of Frankenhooker on the fly, during a pitch meeting. It wasn't until after he secured funding that he actually wrote a script for the film. Despite its inauspicious beginnings, Frankenhooker eventually became, next to the original Basket Case, Henenlotter's best-known and most well-liked film.

Part of Frankenhooker's considerable charm lies in its casting. Henenlotter smartly chose quintessential New York actor James Lorinz to essay the role of mad doctor Jeffrey Franken. An always-on improv comic with a superb sense of timing and a knack for playing fast-talking wiseguys, Lorinz was the breakout star of Street Trash (1987), a now-classic bit of low-budget splatstick centering around a group of winos in a junkyard and the poison booze they all swill. Lorinz played a mob-baiting doorman whose hilarious, impromptu asides are still repeated at horror-nerd parties to this day. Essentially Lorinz plays the raving lunatic version of his Street Trash character in Frankenhooker.

Patty Mullen stars as the Frankenstein-ian hooker of the title. A Penthouse Pet who had just begun dabbling in film - she also appeared in 1987's minor cult-horror obscurity Doom Asylum - Patty gleefully gobbles up the scenery as a twitchy, gum-snapping, undead prostitute. Although she's not given as much screentime as you might expect, given the title of the film, she's an unforgettable character, and a joy to watch.

Aside from the strong casting, Henenlotter also leavens the grotesque body horror with a consistently light tone. Whereas Basket Case and Brain Damage both walked a careful balance between horror and humor, Frankenhooker is just a laugh out loud comedy that happens to be peppered, every ten or so minutes, with flying body parts.

As our story opens, we meet Jeffrey Franken (Lorinz) a mumbling Jersey loser who aspires to be a doctor. Unfortunately, he's already been thrown out of three medical schools, so he is forced to conduct his "Bio-electrical" experiments in his garage. We find him there, poking a brain in a jar with a knife, trying to bring it to life. He is distracted, however, by his chubby fiancé, Elizabeth (Patty Mullen), who encourages him to leave the grubby confines of his make-shift lab and join her in the backyard for a family barbecue. He begrudgingly trudges out into the sunshine, but their joyful celebration soon turns to abject horror when Elizabeth is run over and mulched by a runaway lawnmower.

Jeffrey retreats even further into his own shell after the accident. He lives the life of a virtual hermit in his bedroom and garage, tinkering with mad science and, indeed, with madness. His long-suffering mother (Louise Lasser, star of Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman), encourages him to move on, try and meet someone, or at least get out of the house, but Jeffrey feels he's gone too far over the edge to return to society. Besides, he's got a very important project to work on. He may also be harboring several of Elizabeth's missing body parts, including her head.

Jeffrey's day job is with New Jersey Electric, which affords him the opportunity to smuggle home expensive electrical equipment. He uses these three-foot tall spark plugs and other bits of mad scientist props to build a Frankenstein lab in his absurdly over-sized garage. He adjusts a few knobs and switches, and then pulls Elizabeth's head and a few odd appendages out of the pink "Estrogen bath" they're swirling in. And then he has dinner with his dead girlfriend's still-dead head. He gives her a little wine - naturally, it pours through her severed noggin and soaks into the tablecloth - and then tells her about his plans to resurrect her, using the body parts of centerfold models. And then he reads her a poem, which states, in part, "My heart is packed so love for you/That I dreamed I exploded, like cans of aerosol sometimes do."

Jeffrey hears a weather report on television (the cool ghoul himself, Zacherle, is the weatherman) and finds out a big electrical storm is due in two days. He decides that's when he'll conduct his resurrection experiment. First, however, he has to come up with a new body for the tattered Elizabeth. In order to clear out the nattering voices in his head and focus on the job at hand, Jeffrey utilizes his favorite relaxation technique - he jams a drill into his head to relieve the pressure.
Jeff figures that whores are the easiest way to go, so he cashes in his Christmas Club money and heads to New York City. When he finds a girl to his liking, he tells her that he wants to set up a hooker-filled party for his "sick brother". She introduces him to Zorro (Joseph Gonzalez), a greasy, muscle-bound pimp/crack dealer who promises to set it all up for him.

This business transaction is conducted in a strip club bathroom, which is packed to the tits with crack smoking whores and lowlives. Realizing the drug's potential, Jeffrey buys a baggy full from Zorro. He brings it home and synthesizes it into a powerful new drug, Super Crack. It's like regular crack, only it kills you a lot quicker. Seems valid.

A few days later, the party gets rolling in some seedy motel room downtown. Dressed like a porn movie doctor, Jeffrey measures all the hookers' various body parts, trying to find the perfect specimen.
Eventually, the girls find their way into Jeffrey's bag and discover the Supercrack. Naturally, they dig in and smoke it. A few minutes later, they all start exploding. Jeffrey did not expect such tragic results, and vows to put all the girls back together. So he gathers up all the chunks he can carry in a trash bag, and heads back to New Jersey to do exactly that.

Before he can help the other girls, however, he's got to build a new Elizabeth. He rummages through all the appendages and pieces he dragged home and stitches together a new body for his deceased fiancé. Then he staples her head on and waits for the lightning storm to start.

Amazingly, his cockamamie plan works. Elizabeth does, in fact, return to life, as a spazzy, stitched-together, purple-haired glamazon. However, since she's now at least 70% hooker parts, her natural instincts are to hit the streets, looking for action. She asks Jeffrey if wants a date, but when he tells her he doesn't have any money, she konks him on the head and splits for downtown.

Despite the fact that she's a monster, she quickly finds a willing John (immediately recognizable character actor David Lipman) to bone. They rent a room and get down to business, but Elizabeth discovers a potentially messy side-effect to rebirth - when she has sex with the poor fellow, he overheats and explodes. Meanwhile, Jeffrey hops into his car and heads to Times Square to find his girlfriend. He asks some of the locals if they've seen her - he tells them she's purple, and covered in fresh scars - but they are not much help.

After accidentally blowing up a couple dudes, Elizabeth wanders into a bar, where Zorro notices her Z tattoo, the very same tattoo with which he branded his stable of girls. Since he saw them all blown to bits, he is quite sure that mischief is afoot. He confronts her and, quite literally, punches her head off.

Luckily Jeff shows up in the nick of time and rescues his quickly unraveling creation. He brings her back to his lab, where she suddenly figures out who she is and what's she's become. She is not happy about it. Nor is the machete wielding Zorro, who followed them both back to the lab to reclaim his woman and exact revenge.

And let us not forget all those other reanimated hooker-parts, bubbling away in Jeffrey's magical Estrogen bath.

Suffice to say, things end weirdly for everybody.

Frankenhooker remains a must-see item on anyone's cult movie list largely because it actually delivers on its ludicrous premise. It's called Frankenhooker, and it really does have a Frankenhooker in it. It's also got gallons of goo, disgusting latex monsters, a generous amount of nudity, and the very welcome comic stylings of James Lorinz. Toss in the over-the-top 80's fashions - the 80's lasted until around 1993, if you remember - and Henenlotter's trademark assortment of downtown weirdos, and you've got yourself a very tasty midnight movie snack.

Sadly, Henenlotter's busy career stopped short two years later with the ill-starred Basket Case 3. That's not to say that he didn't keep busy. Henenlotter is personally responsible for the rescue and restoration for dozens of obscure exploitation and sexploitation flicks from the 60's and 70's. Under the banner of his "Sexy Shocker" series for Something Weird Video, Henenlotter has presented the world with unforgettable cinematic experiences like The Curious Doctor Humpp, Dracula the Dirty Old Man, and Terror at Orgy Castle, all grubby grindhouse classics that may have literally ended up in a trash dumpster, were it not for Henenlotter. Frank finally returned to filmmaking after 15 or so years in 2008 with the nihilistic Bad Biology, a typically bizarre tale of a girl with multiple vaginas who meets a boy with a mutant penis. While it clearly lacks Frankenhooker's sense of humor, Bad Biology is at least as disgusting. Probably more.

Surprisingly, after the masterful one-two punch of Street Trash and Frankenhooker, James Lorinz never really got that all-important big break. He did manage to snag bit roles in some notable films and television series - King of New York (1990), RoboCop 3 (1993), NYPD Blue - but his biggest post-Frankenhooker role was in 1995's sadly overlooked Jerky Boys Movie (1995), where he played the Boys' nemesis, Brett Weir. Weir was yet another spin-off from Lorinz stable of mumbly smart-asses, and his performance in the film is hilarious. Unfortunately, nobody really saw the point of a Jerky Boys movie, and the film died a quick and unceremonious death. Lorinz is still acting - as of 2008, he was slated to appear in indie horror flick The Eternal - and he makes appearances at various East Coast horror and movie memorabilia conventions.

Patty Mullen, on the other hand, quit acting completely after Frankenhooker. The still-gorgeous ex-centerfold turned suburban mom now lives in Florida. In a rare interview included on the Frankenhooker Special Edition DVD (Unearthed), she lamented the early end to her acting career, and mentioned that she called Henenlotter shortly before the DVD's release, asking him to make a sequel so she can "Get out of here."

So far, no sequel is planned. But if anybody's career deserves to be resurrected, it's Frankenhooker's.

- Ken McIntyre

Seven Women for Satan (1974)

AKA Les week-ends malefiques du Comte Zaroff
Directed by Michel Lemoine
Starring Michel Lemoine, Joelle Coeur, Nathalie Zeiger, Howard Vernon
Rated R
France

"For a moment, I thought you were a woman, and it hurt me, so very much."

Before we even begin with an analysis of this bizarre little curiosity, I must point out that the title is bad ass. I mean, "Seven Women for Satan"? Bring it on, Jack. Of course, you gotta keep in mind that this film was concocted and shot in France, a country that is not known for it's horror flicks (well, besides the dreamy sex-vamp snore-a-thons of Jean Rollin, maybe), but hey, they actually banned it in their own backyard, so it's gotta have a few sleazy merits, right? Right.

In a rather blazing opening segment, one Mr Boris Zaroff (Lemoine),a libertine trapped in a businessman's life, daydreams of hunting down a naked hippy chick on horseback (with a trusty Great Dane at his heels), and knocking her over a cliff. Then he snaps into reality, eyeing his hippy chick-looking secretary hungrily. Creep city. It's obvious that ol' Boris is gonna head right off the tracks any moment now, and damned if he doesn't find a stray waifish hitch-hiker that very day. He lures the pretty young thing home for the night, imagining a champagne drenched whipping session with her, but manages to keep it (whatever 'it' is) in his pants for the evening.

The next day the two venture out to the south of France, but they stop for a walk in the woods. "You have a beautiful face", Mr. DeSade wannabe tells hitchhiker girl, "made for moments of tenderness, passion...and suffering, also." She looks up at him with dreamy eyes. "That's what I want", she says, breathlessly. So he chokes her. Did we just take a weird turn into Max Hardcore-ville, or what? Boris rips her shirt open, and attempts to rape her. She makes a run for it, and he chases her in his car until she collapses in a heap. Then he dumps her in the lagoon.

Turns out, Zaroff is part of a long-line of pseudo-supernatural sadists. He lives only to satisfy his strange and terrible urges for cruelty and weird sex, and has so far gotten away with his indiscretions because he's super-rich, and because his butler, Karl (Vernon) is the devil. Maybe.

Eventually, in fabled horror flick tradition, a wayward couple (inquisitive young hottie and her dopey, naïve hubby), break down near Zaroff's estate. He lets 'em stay the night and reveals that the mansion has a hidden torture chamber. Wifey, beyond all normal reasoning, decides to go looking for it, and the fun- and mayhem- begins.

My description is actually a lot more straightforward then Seven Women really is - a large portion of the film is dedicated to a series of flashbacks/dream sequences featuring a ghostly woman (Coeur) from Zaroff's past that is either his salvation or his ultimate undoing - but part of the fun of this one is trying to decipher what is real and what is merely cruel imagination. It's hardly gutbucket horror, and the nudity is mostly gauzy and non-sexual (even in the sex scenes), yet the film has a decidedly perverse flair to it, nonetheless. A haunting and compelling slice of Euro-centric weirdfilm, this one. I can't imagine a better movie for 3 AM viewing.

In the bonus section, there's a great featurette called "Formidable" that serves as a handy primer on the life and work of Lemoine, who says fantastic things like "I truly am in love with this Cyclops". He also talks about his 15 years as an actor in Italy, and working with Jean Cocteau, Jess Franco, and Mario Bava. Wild. There's also informative cast bios and trailers. All in all, a pretty swank package. It's not gonna put France on the horror movie map or nothin', but it just might get those fussy characters invited to a few splatterhead parties, at least. Seven Women for Satan is a slow-boiler, for sure, but stick with it, and you'll reap some rich, trippy rewards.

Clip: Seven Women for Satan: Topless French chick dancing!

Honey Britches (1971)

AKA Shantytown Honeymoon, Honey Pie, Hillbilly Hooker, Little Whorehouse on the Prairie, Demented Death Farm Massacre
Rated R
USA

"These hillbillies are big, dumb, and strong. They got muscles they ain't even used yet. Especially in their heads."

Alright, so Kentucky-fried exploitation handyman Donn Davison wasn't the greatest filmmaker - even by my bottom-shelf standards, he's was a cinematic bungler - but he was fantastic at yo-yo tricks. A world champion, even. He was also a magician, specializing in grisly spookshow gags. He also ran the notorious Dragon Art Theater in California for a spell, did voice-overs on countless movie trailers and radio spots, and acted as producer, screenwriter, and director of promotions for Film Ventures International. He also released several helpful how-to books on hypnotism and magic tricks, and even wrote a novel. He might have also gone to the moon once. And listen, the poor fella died at the relatively tender age of 55, so who knows what else he might have accomplished had he lingered on a little longer? So let us cut him some slack on this movie directing thing. He clearly had bigger fish to fry than this goofy bullshit.

Davison shot Honey Britches in Alpharette, Georgia. From its friendly, easy-to-navigate website, the city has clearly grown into its own in the past 35 years. But as depicted in Honey Britches, it's pretty much just a clump of trees and a few shacks. Perhaps it's my Yankee upbringing, but there's something magical about the (non)set design in this movie. How could a place like this exist? Who would live there? You could take all the actors out of the movie and just film the decayed backwoods scenery, and I'd watch it, completely transfixed.

Ah, but you get more than a creepy travelogue here. You get a crime story!

A mismatched group of jewel thieves - Phillip (Mike Coolik), a stuffy, bearded, pseudo-Brit; Kirk (Jim Peck), sideburned slickster; and Karen (Pepper Thurston) and Susan (Trudy Moore), two sharp-tongued gangster molls - crash their getaway plane (!) in the woods of North Carolina. They decide to hole up in the nearest shack and wait until the heat is off before they make their next move.

Meanwhile, a couple of backwoods moonshine runners drop off their weekly shipment to Jessabelle's house of ill-repute. Jess (Valarie Lipsey, a hilariously bad actress) is a statuesque, Pam Grier-ish beauty with full command over her body and her business, which clearly confuses the backwards local yokels. Head shine-pusher Harlan P Craven (George Ellis, Legend of Blood Mountain) exchanges sharp words with the unlikely hillbilly hooker, but she quickly puts hypocritical Harlan in his place.

Interestingly, even though it looks very much like the movie will be about her and her relationship to the bigoted locals, Davison never returns to Jessabelle's house or her story. So why did we go there in the first place? It's as if he changed the entire plot mid-stream, just because he found a girl with bigger tits. It couldn't have been her atrocious acting. There's plenty more of that in here.

Anyway, the blundering robbers ditch their jeep in a clump of trees and then wander through the forest until they come upon the shack of Reba Sue Craven (Ashley Brooke, who is listed as a one-time actress, but looks hauntingly familiar to me. I'm guessing obscure 70's porn starlet?), Harlan's inexplicably gorgeous young wife. She offers them some meager hospitality, and the eagerly take it. As the Craven's do not have any indoor plumbing, Karen and the Amazonian Susan throw on bikinis and head over to the nearby pond to bathe. Reba-Sue is thrown off by their big-city immodesty, but she rolls with it.

Harlan comes home from a busy day hustling corn liquor to find his wife innocently entertaining the two city fellas. This does not make him happy. Along the way, he found their abandoned Jeep and appropriated it, so they're not so thrilled with him, either. But then Harlan gets an eyeful of Susan's magnificent rack, and everything gets smoothed over. Harlan lets the strangers stay the night. He even lets the girls take his bedroom. He and Reba Sue bed down on the kitchen floor, but when his new wife strips down to her underwear and tries to get it on with her hubby (showing off her cesarean scar in the process), the drunken, conflicted Harlan just pushes her away. Clearly, this pop-eyed old fellow has problems.

Speaking of problems, the next morning, Harlan listens to the radio and hears a news report about the missing jewel thieves. Even in his alcoholic haze, he figures out that the culprits are his new house guests. Phillip pulls a gun on him and tells hem that they'll be staying a while. He also orders Reba Sue to rustle up some clothes for them so that they'll fit in with the mountain-folk.

Later on, while Karen, Harlan and Phillip are out doing god knows what, Kirk sits at the kitchen table, bickering with Susan. He finally tells her to get the fuck out, because he's got pressing business with the lady of the house. He barges in to Reba Sue's bedroom, startling the half-naked hillbilly. Then he forces himself on her. When Karen gets wind of it - they're a couple, apparently - she goes bananas, and she and Reba Sue get into a vicious catfight on the kitchen floor. The scuffle ends when Reba Sue cracks Karen's skull with a moonshine jug, killing her. When Kirk announces that Karen's dead, Reba Sue stares directly into the camera and lets out a throaty scream. It's pretty awesome.

So now the robbers have Harlan over a barrel. If he makes a peep about their whereabouts, they'll spill the beans about Karen. He agrees, and buries her in the backyard. Inside, Reba Sue confesses to Kirk that she was forced to marry Harlan because her father owed him $200. Kirk shows her his stash of diamonds and promises to take her with him when they split, if she, you know, plays her cards right.

Meanwhile, Kirk and Phillip cook up a scheme to further wreck Harlan's life. Kirk figures that Harlan must have a stash of moonshine profits somewhere in the house. He tells Phillip he'll start tagging along with Harlan on his runs to keep him away from the shack, while Phillip roots around for the cash. Phil also instructs Susan to use her powers of seduction to weaken Harlan's resolve, so that perhaps he'll just tell her where the money is hidden. So, that's the plan.

Kirk shows up for his first day of work, and Harlan promptly jams a pitchfork through his neck. I did not see that coming. Phillip finds out and gives chase. Somewhere along the way, Big Tits Susan gets run over by the Jeep. Phillip chases Harlen through the woods, and they wrassle. And then Phillip kills the smart-alecky bastard. He comes home to find Reba Sue rifling through the dead city-slickers belongings, which includes a handgun and a million dollars worth of diamonds. Harlan reckons he can take that shit to his shifty pal in Charlotte, who will give him a pretty penny for it. A pretty penny, indeed. "With all the money I'll have, I can make a new start," says Harlan.

Reba stares at him quizzically while fondling the handgun. All the money you'll have? Fuck that.

One of the more stubbornly artless offerings from the 70's drive-in canon, the only element that elevates Honey Britches from Super 8 home movie level is the fact that it was actually shot on 35mm. It does have a surprising amount of blood for 1971, but its also got a surprising dearth of nudity. Reba-Sue briefly flashes boob when Kirk's molesting her, but molested-boob hardly counts, does it? Otherwise, the film is quite chaste. So what are we left with? Well, as with all choice nuggets of badfilm, Honey Britches is a full-immersion experience. Nothing - not the badly scratched print, the woeful acting, the eyeball-offending ugliness of the shacks and the barren woods, or even the tomato sauce gunshot wounds - can pull you out of this movie's hypnotic spell. For the 80 or so minutes that it ever-so-slowly unspools, you can't help but to be fully engrossed in this lurid melodrama, acted out by clueless non-actors in some strange and distant land nearly 40 years ago. It is fitting that most of the cast came and went with this movie. The better to imagine them as ethereal spirits of the Georgian woods, who somehow managed to manifest themselves for Davison's cockeyed camera, and then slipped back into the darkness of the undergrowth. I haven't seen anything so oddly soothing yet vaguely troubling since the last time I chugged an entire bottle of Nyquil and spent 36 hours snoozing away on the couch.

I'm not sure if that's a recommendation for Honey Britches or Nyquil, but I'd certainly try one of 'em this weekend, if I was you.

By the way, in the mid 80's, Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers helmer Fred Olen Ray edited some random John Carradine footage into Honey Britches and sold it to Troma, who released it as Demented Death Farm Massacre, and hyped it as "Deliverance Meets A Fish Called Wanda". Holy smokes, they are fucking crazy at Troma.

Honey Britches is available from Something Weird Video.

Clip: Honey Britches trailer!

- Ken McIntyre