Tom Nardini from Winter A-Go-Go is Mexican-American student Tony Perez (not "The Hook") in Maury Dexter's pulpy yet unsparing focus on Caucasian racism that, 57 years later, still manages to piss off a few bigots. Filmed in Tucson, Arizona, the American International release also stars handyman-burning Patty McCormack (The Mini-Skirt Mob) as the non-racist love interest, winsome Joanna Frank (The Savage Seven), A Martinez from Jimmy P: Psychotherapy of a Plains Indian, and David Macklin from Laurence Harvey's Welcome to Arrow Beach as the lead heavy. Screenwriter James Gordon White penned more deranged dandies for such auteurs as Ted Mikels (Ten Violent Women), Lee Frost (The Thing With Two Heads), and David L. Hewitt (The Tormentors). The soundtrack was provided by Les ("Quiet Village") Baxter, motorcycle maestro Harley Hatcher of "Satan" infamy, and the short-lived, Hatcher-produced psych band The American Revolution.

Let three European art film directors each tackle an Edgar Allan Poe short story, because what could go wrong? Quite a bit if Histoires extraordinaires (1968) is the evidence. Despite siblings Peter and Jane Fonda as love interests, Roger Vadim's attempt at a medieval epic with Poe's "Metzengerstein" is no more convincing and far less fun than Andy Milligan's 1969 Torture Dungeon. Louis Malle likewise misses the mark with the dopey doppelganger drama "William Wilson" starring Alain Delon (Purple Noon) in a dual role with a cigar-smoking Brigitte Bardot (Naughty Girl) as a gambler who runs afoul of Delon's bad side. Cribbing from Mario Bava, Federico Fellini takes top honors by ignoring all but the basic premise of Poe's obscure satire "Never Bet The Devil Your Head," with a hysterical Terence Stamp (Modesty Blaise) as a cracked actor haunted by a "devilish" child (Marina Yaru in her only role). The following year American International added a prologue voiced by Vincent Price and issued the recut trilogy to U.S. audiences as Spirits Of The Dead.

American International Pictures was behind the 1964 U.S. release for this often overlooked British sci-fi thriller from director John Krish (The Decline and Fall...of a Birdwatcher). Effective though economically realized, it starred John Neville (Sherlock Holmes from A Study In Terror) as a scientist developing a form of interplanetary teleportation whose new bride (Gabriella Licudi from The Last Safari) cries toxic tears and has no need for oven mitts. Also with the late Jean The Limping Man Marsh, Philip Stone from O Lucky Man!, Warren Mitchell (Blood Beast From Outer Space), and Patrick Newell from many episodes of television's "The Avengers." 

Elizabeth Shepherd (Man in the Dark) is the title corpse in director Roger The Trip Corman's final Edgar Allan Poe adaptation. She's also Lady Rowena, the new wife of Verden Fell (Vincent The Tingler Price), the bereaved. That hubby is still obsessed with his previous mate, who isn't exactly dead, results in marital complications beyond what a newspaper advice columnist might address. Overacted and with a garish script, early work from screenwriters Robert Towne (Chinatown) and Paul Mayersburg (The Man Who Fell To Earth), it was Price's (and my) favorite of the Poe cycle.

Ruth Gassman is a naive newlywed in this surprisingly earnest 1967 German sex ed export that treads similar ground as such roadshow films of the forties as Mom and Dad. Unlike those films, however, this one was government-sponsored as a means of disseminating family planning information. A major hit at home, Helga was acquired and released in the U.S. by AIP, who also added a prologue and additional scenes. Gassman and director Erich Bender were back the following year with Michael and Helga.

Also known as Naked You Die and Schoolgirl Killer, Antonio Cannibals In The Streets Margheriti's early giallo set in an exclusive girls' boarding school featured Mark Damon (Crypt of the Living Dead) as a riding instructor who comes under suspicion of being the killer who's preying on the student body. Also with Michael Rennie (1960's The Lost World) as an ineffectual detective and Eleanor Brown from Vittorio De Sica's Two Women (1960).

Mr. B.I.G. Bert I. Gordon produced and directed this screwy sci-fi tale about a high school teacher (Ed Kemmer from the Space Patrol kiddie television series) who joins his students in fighting an enormous, man-eating arachnid holed up in Los Angeles' Bronson Canyon. Sam Fuller vet Gene Roth (The Baron Of Arizona) is the local sheriff, and June Kenney (Bloodlust!) and Eugene Persson from the "Ma and Pa Kettle" series are the teen couple who first discover the giant creepy crawler. The "teen" band that wakes the temporarily comatose spider features guitar great James Burton from Elvis' TCB band. Ticket buyers anticipating a giant spider with human skull were probably disappointed.

It's American International Pictures week, beginning with this 1963 "mondo" import from filmmakers Mino Loy (1967's campy Flashman) and Luigi Sweden: Heaven And Hell Scattini that didn't see a U.S. theatrical release until AIP's 1967 dubbed version. Risqué nightclub acts from touristy locales such as Paris' Crazy Horse Saloon and lesser flesh palaces alternate with bare skin in picaresque settings and likely staged tribal customs. AIP-TV later offered a somewhat sanitized version for television distribution.

B-movie stuntman and action hero William Smith (Invasion Of The Bee Girls) stars as a U.S. soldier fighting merciless Japanese invaders in the Philippines during WWII in this update of a shopworn roadshow trope as cranked out in films such as 1953's Blood Of Bataan. Co-starring is John Superbeast Garwood as a hideously disfigured soldier hellbent on revenge, and veteran of myriad Filipino films Vic The Blood Drinkers Diaz as his intended prey. A somnolent script, indifferent performances, and excess exposition render this weak tea for a Boxoffice International release. Rated PG.

New York mega-movie broker William Mishkin distributed this 1966 update of the rickety roadshow cliché about a country girl (Brigitte Evans, no other credits, as Cherry Holloway) who inadvertently joins a prostitution racket operating out of a model agency. Jerald Intrator (Satan In High Heels) directed from a script by Charles Ross, writer of the lurid 1968 doc The Wild Wild World Of Jayne Mansfield. Also with Doris Wishman vets Anna Karol (The Sex Perils Of Paulette) and Jackie Indecent Desires Richards, and Johnny Kuhl from Joe Sarno films (Warm Nights and Hot Pleasures). Though the film has yet to resurface, press materials also indicate the presence of several formidable beehive hairdos.