Producer "William Garvin" is actually foulard-clad film distributor Harry H. Novak (A Scream In The Streets) under a nom de guerre for this 1971 bogus documentary with a closing segment that, pre-Deep Throat but post-Mona, crosses into hardcore porn. Drop-out Catholic nun and future filmmaker Ann Perry portrays a prostie in a skit that also features Norman Booby Trap Fields as a whip-wielding deviate, while Neola Graef (Love Secrets Of The Kama Sutra) fills out the pornography angle as an in-demand smut star. Also with bountiful Barbara Mills (The Stewardesses), Stephanie Sarver from Big Beaver Splits The Scene, and Al The Cremators Ward. The second of only two features as director, Susumu Tokunow, who also appears, fared better as soundman for David Lynch (Mulholland Drive), John Face/Off Woo, and others.

Writer/director Richard Franklin (1971's Eroticon) made only four features, and this trippy hardcore obscurity was the capper of his brief career. It concerns a sexually bored young married couple who, along with their besties, find what was missing at a swingers' club called Loveland. The film's orgy scenes were later edited into another X-rated feature, the Peter Savage film They Shall Overcome (1974), about a scientist who concocts a medication that breaks down social inhibitions. Both films are currently MIA.

AIP issued producer Joseph Green's lurid living head horror film paired with actor Bruno The Female Jungle VeSota's final feature as director. The former starred Jason Evers (House of Women) as an ethically challenged scientist who keeps alive the severed head of his wife (Virginia Leith from Black Widow) while he searches strip clubs and modeling studios for a replacement body. Enormous Eddie Carmel from 50,000 B.C. (Before Clothing) is the show-stopping monster in the closet. VeSota's abominable sci-fi comedy starred Robert The Brain Eaters Ball and Frank Perilli (New Orleans Uncensored) as two nebbishy G.I.s sent to check out a mysterious cave inside a nuclear testing site, where they encounter aliens Dr. Puna (Gloria Victor from Girl Gang) and Professor Tanga (Dolores Reed from Hugo Haas' Hit and Run) and their minions the Star Creatures. The sappy script was courtesy of Jonathan Little Shop of Horrors Haze, and Russ Meyer composer Bill Loose was responsible for the score.

Roger Corman (Teenage Caveman) notoriously dropped acid as research into Jack Nicholson's script about a television commercial director (Peter Fonda from Tammy and the Doctor) for whom the drug becomes a catalyst for self-discovery. Also with Dennis Hopper (Night Tide) as a guru type, Susan Strasburg (Scream of Fear) as Fonda's soon to be ex-spouse, and Bruce The Incredible 2-Headed Transplant Dern, along with a Who's Who of performers from previous Corman films.

Former teen idol James Darren (Gidget Goes Hawaiian) and singer/actress Barbara McNair (If He Hollers, Let Him Go) somehow ended up cast in a Jesus Succubus Franco film, this one originally conceived by the director as an interracial love story until American International nixed the notion and imposed a title suggesting the writings of Leopold von Sacher-Masoch. Darren is trumpet player Jimmy Logan, whose discovery of a dead body (Maria Rohm from Night of the Blood Monster) washed ashore triggers disturbing memories that gradually erode his already fragile perception of reality. Or so it seems. Also with Klaus Kinski (Marquis de Sade's Justine) as a wastrel, a jazz band featuring director Franco as well as U.K. musician Manfred Mann, and, purportedly, a script contribution from jazz great Chet Baker.

Writer/director Paolo Black Belly of the Tarantula Cavara's quasi-autographical 1967 shocker stars Phillippe Leroy (The Night Porter) as a morally bankrupt documentary filmmaker, a character apparently inspired by Cavara's previous association with "mondo" director Gualtiero Jacopetti of Africa Addio infamy. Also with Delia Boccardo (Tentacles), Lars Bloch from Juliette DeSade, and the ubiquitous Gabriele Tinti (Beaks: The Movie). AIP released it domestically the following year to little notice, though it was a surprise hit at the fifth annual Moscow Film Festival.

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.