Peruvian-born porn meister and theater owner Efrain "Carlos" Tobalina (Notorious Big Sin City) made a number of soft-X films prior to going explicit with such fare as 1982's Lust Inferno. His Orgy American Style from 1973 is one of the former, though released in separate "hot" and "cool" versions. The film's imdb.com entry mistakenly outlines the scenario of Bethel Buckalew's The Dirty Mind Of Young Sally, whereas Tobalina's celluloid mess mostly consists of poorly rendered orgy scenes with unlikely partners (a policeman, a minister, a psychiatrist, etc.). The cast is a "who's who" of west coast pornography, including Colleen Brennan (nom de porn: Sharon Kelly) and Sandy Carey, both from A Scream In The Streets, the ever-popular Rene Bond (Teenage Fantasies), Sandy Violated! Dempsey, Becky Sharpe from Inside Pussycat, Rick Lutze (Beach Blanket Bango) as compromised cop "Lee Ronder," balding Keith Erickson (Let's Lick Dick), and Angela Carnon from Lee Frost's nasty A Climax Of Blue Power. Prolific bit player George "Buck" Flower (Please Don't Eat My Mother) also appears (as "Buck La Fleur"). The name-dropping press book posits resplendent redhead Sharon Kelly, who displayed genuine acting talent, as "the new Marilyn Monroe."

ecco Film and Video will be taking a much-needed vacation. We'll be back on October 7 with more artwork from cult film and exploitation movie history.

Two rival criminal gangs, one led by Wolf, a blind trumpet player (character actor Hans Verner), battle to control the heroin trade and watch as many strip acts as possible (well, except for the trumpet player) in French skin flick auteur José Bénazéraf's 1963 crime drama Le concerto de la peur ("The Concerto of Fear"). The film was snapped up by Olympic International's Bob Cresse, who hacked out much of the already loose scenario to make way for more striptease footage filmed stateside by his partner Lee Frost (The Black Gestapo). Budget-minded Olympic also added a narration track to obviate the need to dub the French language film into English. With Jean-Pierre Kalfon from Claude Lelouch's Night Women (also bastardized by Cresse) as Wolf's rival Margieff, Michel Lemoine (Jess Franco's Succubus), Yvonne Monlaur (The Brides of Dracula) as a kidnapped chemist, Willy Braque from Bénazéraf's Sexus, and sultry Sylvie Bréal (Alain Robbe-Grillet's The Man Who Lies). The bracing score was improvised by jazz great and noted heroin addict Chet Baker. Cinematographer Edmond Richard also worked for top-shelf filmmakers such as Orson Welles (Chimes at Midnight) and Luis Bunuel (The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie). Based on the novel "The Scent of Fear" by French pulp writer Anne-Marie Devillers (pen name Dominique Dorn).

After she's been flattened like a flapjack by a speeding truck, suburbanite Dan Davis learns that his gambling-addicted wife Pat (Tiffany James) had secretly swapped her nurse's job for turning tricks as a motel hooker. Told in flashback, Pat's double life collapses when her loose-lipped neighbor shows up as a john. The only film credited to Vincent L. Sinclair, the obscure Women of Desire was picked up by Harry Novak's Boxoffice International for a 1967 release. The cast and crew, aside from Monica Davis (Barry Mahon's The Dead One), is equally uncelebrated, and aside from its crudely edited trailer the film is considered lost.

The late Florida-based actor William "Rooney" Kerwin (Sylvia's Girls) stars as Bermuda, a petty criminal who, with new partner Rick, lands at swank Miami Beach motel The Castaways and proceeds to seduce kinky married matron Margo along with amorous April, the latter making the scene with her Caddy-driving "daddy." Produced and directed by Jerry (Honey) Denby, who padded the soft core gropings with swimming pool chats, Bermuda's high-diving skills, and south Florida motel architecture. Distributed by New York's CIP Ltd. (Teenage Gang Debs). 

In an attempt to capitalize on the still-controversial Kinsey Institute reports on human sexuality, 3-D enthusiast Arch (The Twonky) Oboler wrote and directed this 2-D, black & white "sex education" feature from 1961. Purportedly based on Oboler's own stage play "Mrs. Kingsley's Report," it consisted of five segments, each devoted to a specific aspect of adult sexual life. Aged Hollywood star Leo G. Carroll (Tarantula) headlines as Professor Logan, who leads a symposium of experts on sexuality as a framework for the five case histories. The cast also featured classy Hildy Brooks from John Frankenheimer's The Iceman Cometh, William Traylor (The Legend Of Hillbilly John), Kate Reid from The Sidelong Glances Of A Pigeon Kicker, June Duprez (The Brighton Strangler), Ernest (Hercules In New York) Graves, and others better known for guest roles on television. Filmed in various locations throughout Ontario, including Toronto's Royal Ontario Museum, and not to be confused with the Jean-Luc Godard film of the same title. Despite the 114 minute running time cited elsewhere (including its pressbook), the theatrical release was 81 minutes.

Originally titled Nudismo Não É Pecado (Nudism Is Not A Sin), the 1961 Brazilian teaser Sun Lovers Holiday was directed by Ukranian cinematographer Konstantin Tkaczenko, a former soldier for the USSR who relocated to Rio de Janeiro in 1947 to escape political persecution. It featured beefy actor Mário Benvenutti, who later appeared in Ozualdo Ibeiro Candeias' experimental The Margin (1969). Also appearing were Irene de Luca and singly-named Siomara, both of whom would later star in Tkaczenko's 1962 nudie cutie Isto é Streap-Tease. The U.S. version was narrated by Fred Maness, the voice of Universal Newsreels, while Robert Savini's Astor Pictures handled distribution. Tkaczenko served as cinematographer for Richard She Demons Cunha's 1960 detective tale Girl In Room 13, which was set in Brazil and also featured Benvenutti.

The first feature directed by New Orleans-born Joy Newton Houck, Jr., son of Howco International Pictures (Ed Wood's Jailbait) founder and theater-chain owner Joy N. Houck, Sr., the derivative Night Of Bloody Horror shamelessly flaunts its influences - Hitchcock's Psycho and the bargain basement oeuvre of H.G. Lewis, to name two - while struggling to achieve its ambitions with a poverty row budget. Future television star Gerald McRaney (HBO's Deadwood) is Wesley, a mentally damaged young man with a tragic back-story that is gradually revealed as the blood-soaked body count rises. McRaney's co-stars include Houck team player Evelyn Hendrix (Women and Bloody Terror) as his angst-ridden mother, Charlotte White from the nutty 2069 A.D., Nick Krieger from Brian De Palma's Obsession, and character actor Michael Anthony (Curtis Harrington's Mata Hari). Highlights include a grisly Catholic confessional, a memorably disturbing dream sequence, and the pervasive grimy Garden District atmosphere. Aside from the cribbed library score there's a musical appearance by short-lived New Orleans-based psych band The Bored, whose other big moment was opening for Steppenwolf that same year. Houck, Jr.'s penultimate film was the 1976 "Bigfoot" saga Creature From Black Lake.

Filmmaker and train enthusiast William (aka Werner) Rose (The Smut Peddler), the man behind the camera for the notorious Madame Olga films and other dermatological diversions, grabbed the director's chair for this dusted-off relic of a plot contrivance. Stop me if you've heard this one: a naive young woman (Barbara Wood from The Hookers) discovers that the modeling agency she, uh, hooks up with is actually a front for prostitution with a kinky clientele. With Tracy Lee (The Bizarre Ones), John Damon from Beware the Black Widow, Frank Spencer (Joe Sarno's Red Roses of Passion), and cameos from New York soft core superstars June Roberts (Take Me Naked), Darlene Bennett and gal pal Gigi Darlene (Bad Girls Go To Hell), and jaunty Judy Adler from Satan's Bed. Lee Hessel's Cambist Films trafficked primarily in sexploitation (The Minx) and horror (George Romero's The Crazies) before calling it quits in 1978.

Sidney Knight (the sicko snuff-themed The Debauchers) directed this bogus white coater that was mostly filmed in the "Scandinavian" community of Manhattan with New York porn performers such as Jason and Tina Russell (Doris Wishman's Keyholes Are For Peeping), Jean Parker from Stigma, Dolly Sharp (aka Helen Wood from The Filthiest Show In Town), notorious Avon (not the cosmetics company) auteur Shaun Costello (Daughters of Discipline), and man about town Jamie Gillis from too many adult films to cite. The setup is typical for the genre: a psychiatrist (the likely pseudonymous Ingrid Peterson) assists her clients in overcoming their sexual hangups, and we get to watch. The Distribpix website, which gets the title wrong, notes that the film has "the Ron Jeremy seal of approval."

Max Pécas' 1967 Une femme aux abois concerns the sexual blackmail of an adulterous housewife by her degenerate half-brother Maurice and his compliant girlfriend, who use their leverage to engage her in their debauchery. The deux ex machina arrives in the form of a skin-headed psycho with a grudge to settle against Maurice. With Claude Cerval from Bob le Flambeur, Milarka Nervi (Beyond Love and Evil), and Pierre Tissot from Pecas' The Black Hand. The tawdry tale was written by novelist Jean-Patrick Manchette, who also scripted last week's entry Little Girls. Pecas' original was so sufficiently kinky that Bob Cresse's Olympic International had no need to film inserts.