Mothers get all the blame for the fate of their wayward offspring in this 1939 roadshow classic also released as Girls Of The Underworld. Silent film star Betty Compson from Josef von Sternberg's The Docks of New York (1928) is socialite Lucy Morgan, whose partying lifestyle and flings with male escorts leaves her no time to supervise her hot-to-trot daughter Marian (Pride Of The Bowery's Mary Ainslee) who is ultimately kidnapped by a prostitution ring. With oily Willy Castello (Confessions Of A Vice Baron) as mom's favorite gigolo and Margaret Fealy from The Return Of Dr. Fu Manchu (1930). Director Melvin Shyer (Smashing The Vice Trust) helmed several more roadshow epics before assuming the role of assistant director for a whopping 166 feature films, including Robert Siodmak's Hemingway adaptation The Killers (1946), and fifties' television fare such as Lassie.

Dino Fantini, whose only other acting credit is the made-for-television Return to Peyton Place (1972) is teen greaser Dirk Williams, a lust-crazed enforcer for a porno film racket led by Gloria Henderson (Jean Fontaine) and director Johnny Ryde (Carl Anthony from Plan Nine From Outer Space). In writing and directing an apparent anti-porn film, famed schlock filmmaker Edward D. Wood Jr. was continuing the hypocritical legacy of roadshow reels that offered jaded audiences eyefuls of whatever they were purportedly condemning, be it teen sex, drugs, prostitution, or juvenile delinquency. In less than ten years Wood would be making his own smut movies. Also with Kenne Duncan (The Astounding She Monster), Duke Moore from Wood's Night Of The Ghouls, and Buster Keaton's brother Harry (Dance Hall Racket).

Unintentional Dadaist filmmaker Charles Nizet (Help Me...I'm Possessed) wrote and directed this pulpy prevarication about an island of alluring Amazons, toting machine guns and wearing little else, who've developed a powerful magnetic force with which they crash airplanes. The male survivors are then put to forced labor, made into their sex slaves, and finally slaughtered as in the equally screwy Six She's and A He. Peter Owen, also in Nizet's Three-Way Split (1970), is featured along with Tina Vienna from The Brick Dollhouse (1967) amid a handful of first and last-timers. Produced by Nizet partner Dave Ackerman (The Ravager).

Big drink of water Wade Popwell is a furry, portrait-sketching fish monster in Don Barton and Arnold Stevens' incoherent 1971 sci-fi feature inspired by news articles about walking catfish. The fishy fiend is murderous mutated scientist Dr. Kurt Leopold (Marshall Grauer), a sourpuss intent on wiping out humanity once he's created a fish-woman mate out of one unlucky federal agent (Sanna Ringhaver). Can her agency partner Walker (Dave Dickerson), the town's redneck sheriff (Paul Galloway from J.D.'s Revenge), or his dumbass deputy (Jaws 3D's Rich Valliere) save the planet from a catfish takeover? Filmed around Jacksonville, Florida and originally screened exclusively for the pissed-off patrons of southern drive-ins, Barton's bottom feeder suffered an abortive Times Square run when reissued by the late Terry Levene's Aquarius Releasing as Blood Waters of Dr. Z. 

In one-time director George Drazich's lame 1974 sex comedy about the fictional country of "Crotavia" and its bogus bicentennial celebration, Keith Erickson (The Dicktator) is the national ambassador and Boxoffice regular George "Buck" Flower is his simpering aide. Also with Carol Hawkins from the "Carry On" films, Gene Rowland from the 1970 white-coater Positions, and Dalana Bissonnette (1972's Sleazy Rider).

Writer/producer/director Paul Aratow (Bizarre Devices) directed this 1983 sexploitation snoozer about writer John Wainwright (character actor Larry Hankin from China DeSade) who believes himself to be the reincarnation of the fictional character Svengali. Wainwright is in thrall to his hypnotic publisher Sir Stephen, whose character is lifted from The Story of O but with a Satanic twist, and this update's Trilby (Jane Brunel-Cohen) is no longer an opera singer but an exotic dancer. Watch for porn stars including the recently departed Paul Thomas (Friday the 13th: A Nude Beginning), Clair Dia (Sharon's Rosebud), and the late Ken Scudder from Thundercrack! Aratow's original was edited by future Hollywood screenwriter David Webb Peoples (Clint Eastwood's Unforgiven). In 1983 Independent International's Sam Sherman and Al Adamson (Brain of Blood) hacked out most of the softcore smut and added new scenes featuring prolific old John Carradine (House of Frankenstein), former western star Don Barry (Square Dance Jubilee), and Adamson's spouse Regina Carroll (Blood of Ghastly Horror). The cobbled-together result screened at drive-ins as the horror feature Doctor Dracula.

Joseph Brenner imported this lurid 1953 World War II propaganda film from the Philippines and unleashed it upon a perplexed public unaccustomed to war movies with song and dance numbers performed on the battlefield. It starred Leopoldo Salcedo (Barbi: Maid In The Philippines), Fernando Sex Gang Royo, Guillerno Carls (Berto's victim from Big Time Berto), and Mona Lisa from Forbidden Women. Lino Brocka it ain't.

February 1962 Playboy Playmate of the Month, Norway's Kari Knudson, stars in her only film role as Ann, yet another aspiring innocent with dreams of big-city stardom. With sister Sally (June Ashley) she applies for modeling jobs in Manhattan, but ultimately those assignments lead to...The Orgy at Lil's Place (1963). Terry Powers from Barry Mahon's 1,000 Shapes of a Female is the titular Lil, with support from Anita Ventura (1970's Teenie Tulip) and pouty-lipped Davee Decker (Doris Wishman's Diary of a Nudist). Director/producer and film distributor Gerald Intrator, whose first directorial effort had been the 1953 burlesque revue Striporama with Bettie Page, followed this one with The Sexperts: Touched By Temptation (1965), while co-writer and narrator Alan Bodian scripted the Academy Award-nominated documentary Jack Johnson (1970) about boxing's first Black World Heavyweight Champion.

Director/actor Peter Savage (Doris Wishman's Double Agent 73) enlisted his pals, former World Middleweight Champion boxers Rocky Graziano (Teenage Millionaire) and Jake "Raging Bull" LaMotta (Confessions of a Psycho Cat), to appear with him in inserts to enliven Heißer Sand auf Sylt, a turgid 1968 sex comedy about a wayward husband from German director Jerzy Macc (Ready, Willing and Able). The original German feature starred former SS member Horst Tappert from Jesús Franco's The Devil Came from Akasava, actor/director Charlotte Kerr (the 1966 German sci-fi series Raumpatrouille), Solvi Stubing from Secret Agent Super Dragon, and Renate Those Fantastic Flying Fools Holt. Along with the prior palookas, Savage's new footage featured Jennifer Stone from Frank Perry's 1963 nuclear annihilation drama Ladybug, Ladybug and shapely Sheila Murder In Mississippi Britt as a nudist. Both LaMotta and Graziano hit the talk show circuit to promote the film and also appeared in Savage's deservedly obscure 1970 gangster comedy Cauliflower Cupids. Not yet down for the count, Savage later contributed to the script and portrayed fight promoter Jackie Curtie in Martin Scorsese's Academy Award-winning film about LaMotta, Raging Bull (1980).

"They trade kisses for drinks!" Former burlesque performer turned impresario and filmmaker Lillian Everybody's Girl Hunt co-directed, with James R. Connell (Merry Maids Of The Gay Way), this 1952 staging of a burlesque revue at Los Angeles' Burbank Theater, then managed and operated by Hunt's Follies, Inc. enterprise. For her bump and grind routine, star stripper Lily Ayers is a B-girl on a barroom set reminiscent of junior high stagecraft. There's also peelers Ginger Duvall (Russ Meyer's The French Peep Show), Crystal Starr (French Follies), Chili Pepper (Vegas Nights), Nona Carver ("Sleazy Maisie Rumpledinck" from Ed Wood's 1970 opus Take It Out In Trade), and more. If you watch these for the comedians, they're here as well.