With the most professional-looking campaign of his career, H.G. Lewis' production of The Prime Time (1960) was the sole feature from its director, the thoroughly competent PSA filmmaker Gordon Weisenborn whom Lewis would later amusingly label a hack. Future Blood Feast partner David F. Friedman was a production supervisor, and cinematography was by Roger Corman alumnus Andrew Costikyan (Beast From Haunted Cave). It also marks the first screen appearance of prolific film fan fave Karen Black (Repo Chick).
Musician/dancer/actor Eric Emerson of Andy Warhol's Factory crew and Ellen Butler (Guess Who's Coming? ) star in this 1969 New York sex comedy about a wacky professor (the singularly credited Hal Friend) who trades brainwaves among a group of sailors and various East Village types with less than hilarious results but more bisexual hijinks than the competition. Writer/director Harlan Renvok remains a mystery.
Long before it was the name of the leading purveyor of cult movies to the home video market, Something Weird was a lesser-appreciated 1968 feature film from the Chicago era of the inestimable Herschell Gordon Lewis. It starred Tony McCabe and Elizabeth Lee, both of whom later appeared in Lewis' Suburban Roulette, Mudite Arams as "The Hag," and Lawrence Aberwood, the infamous mouth from Scum Of The Earth.
Director/co-writer/cinematographer Gary Graver's 1970 softcore sex spectacle stars a persuasive Monica Gayle (Switchblade Sisters) as a rural runaway who takes on the San Francisco scene the way one usually does in these films. Also with Uschi Digard and Jean Clark, the hunchback from Graver's The Kill (1968).
Filmmaker Stuart McGowan led a varied career, directing westerns (including 134 episodes of television's Death Valley Days), war movies (Tokyo File 212), childrens' films (Mr. Too Little), and this 1969 curio, aka The Passion Pit, which stars actual twins Robert and David Story in the role of, uh, actual twins. One's a psychopath who stores his victims' corpses in the ice house where he works, the other's his honest cop brother investigating the cold case when they're not dancing "The Scrub" along with Johnny Wadd at the oh-so-groovy Magic Mushroom. Also with Jim Davis (Jock Ewing from Dallas), Scott The Mighty Gorga Brady, Otto Preminger vet Kelly Ross, the "British Marilyn Monroe" Sabrina, and Jennifer Aniston's mom.
The sole directorial feature of composer and Jacques Brel booster Mort Shuman, the writer behind many of the Drifters' hit records and co-writer of "Viva, Las Vegas" as well as sometimes actor (The Little Girl Who Lives Down The Lane), Hot Erotic Dreams followed the nocturnal fantasies of a professional model (Andy Milligan star Anne Linden) as inspired by her pre-bedtime reading of a prurient paperback. It might also be Shuman hiding behind the pseudonym given for the original jazz score.
Steve Blood Freak Hawkes directs and stars in this 1969 Floridian voyeur-a-thon about a no-tell motel and the blackmailing SOB manager (western star William Henry) who secretly films the illicit action. With Jody Baby from The Hot Pearl Snatch (1966).
This 1959 oater, the first feature from Richard C. Sarafian, the director of the classic Vanishing Point (1971), sat unsold and unseen for three years before being picked up by the hopeful distributors of Bachelor Tom Peeping. It starred television character actors Peter Mamakos and House Peters Jr. (aka Mr. Clean) along with Sandra Knight from Frankenstein's Daughter and the aptly named King (Teenagers From Outer Space) Moody. Mamakos, whose career spans decades playing characters of various ethnicities, is a Mexican father seeking revenge against those who lynched his son.
Radley Metzger's 1973 ambisexual fantasy Score starred gay porn icon Casey Boys In The Sand Donovan (aka Calvin Culver); Claire Wilbur, reprising her role (then opposite Sly Stallone) from Jerry Douglas' original Off-Broadway play; and, central to Audubon's campaign, Lynn Lowry from I Drink Your Blood. It was not a favorite of the late Roger Ebert.
Herschell Gordon Lewis' 1968 look at "wife swapping" culture in the 'burbs was filmed in a Chicago suburb with a handful of regulars (Elizabeth Lee, Bill Kerwin, Bunny Downe, Ben Moore) from his livelier Florida productions. It ranks as perhaps the dullest of his career. Financed by soundtrack composer David Chudnow, known for western themes and the (uncredited) scoring of Russ Meyer's Erotica, though he refrained from scoring this one.
|