Though it's known today as Behind Locked Doors, the R-rated Boxoffice International release was originally issued in 1968 by NYC's mighty Distribpix as the X-rated Any Body Any Way and also played in a purportedly more explicit version as Then Came Ecstasy. For the Boxoffice artwork, go here.
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Micro-budget specialist W. Merle Connell, who'd been churning out roadshow features such as Test Tube Babies since the 1940s, capped off his career with this 1960 nudie cutie in the wake of Russ Meyer's The Immoral Mr. Teas from the previous year. The amorous advances of Henry (Hank Henry from the 1957 musical Pal Joey) are rebuffed by his hair-curler'ed wife, a role credited to "Valkyra," so he retreats into fantasy scenarios involving chastely posed naked women. Among the latter are Betty Blue from Paul Morrissey's Women In Revolt (1971), Lisa Drake (Robert Mulligan's The Rat Race), and The Touchables' Doris Gohlke. Also with diminutive burlesque comedian Jack Little, star of Connell's 1950 featurette Tomb Itmay Concern. Produced by porn legend and Betty Blue spouse Ted Paramore (Jane Bond Meets Thunderthighs).
Scattered throughout Barry Mahon's bursting at the seams filmography of nudie and sexploitation features with titles such as The Diary of Knockers McCalla (1968), outliers such as the New Orleans-set zombie horror The Dead One (1961) and this ludicrous cold-war propaganda "exposé" from 1960 predate the teen and kiddie features he later churned out. Tanya (Monica Davis from 1967's The Hookers) and John (John McKay from Mahon's earlier Cuban Rebel Girls) are U.S. spies who handily infiltrate the upper echelons of Russia's intelligence operations and learn of an impending rocket attack on apple pie America. The international intrigue is pantomimed in front of sub-Ed Wood sets by cast members who can barely read their lines, and the fatalistic finalé is too little, too late. Also with Art Metrano (Beverly Hills Bodysnatchers) and Jane Ross from Richard Hilliard's lost Wild Is My Love (1963).
"Where roommates are playmates." Jack Blonde On A Bum Trip Bravman directed this 1969 soft core sex cheapie using his "Wizard Glick" nom de porn. It features pseudonymous performers Sheba Swengire and Sandra Sture, both from Sex Family Robinson On The Farm, and Tulip Moyst and Linda Lust (Varro?) from The Ballers, all from Bravman's own Boss Productions. Though the pressbook offers no synopsis, the poorly cropped stills indicate that emphasis is on the "mate" in "roommate."
Busty stripper Virginia "Ding Dong" Bell (Bell, Bare and Beautiful) is the featured performer in this 1961 burlesque film produced by then-husband Eli Jackson and filmed in Atlantic City, New Jersey's long-gone Globe Theater by burly-Q magazine editor turned director Jay Hornick. It takes a prurient peek at professional peelers such as Electrique (The Case of the Stripping Wives) and Debbie Starr, periodically punctuated by awkward comic routines and a vocal number from crooner Johnny Crawford (not The Rifleman actor). New York-based kingpin of exploitation William Mishkin (Violated) was the distributor. Cameraman Don Malkames had previously filmed music revues such as early jazz film Jivin' in Be-bop (1946) with Dizzy Gillespie and the low-budgeted Louis Jordan vehicle Reet, Petite and Gone (1947).
Fondly remembered as one of Boxoffice International's more offbeat beat-off epics, Ron Garcia's surreal The Toy Box (1971) features an unexpected sci-fi twist along with a bevy of beauties in the buff including Ann Perry (House on Bare Mountain), Debbie Osborne (Cindy from Cindy and Donna), Kathy Daughter of Satan Hilton, Maria Arnold from The Harem Bunch, Russ Meyer fave Uschi Digard (Cherry, Harry & Raquel), and, briefly, skin flick queen Marsha Jordan (The Head Mistress). Also with Sean Kinney from The Corpse Grinders and Mrs. Stone's Thing's big Jack King. Director/writer Garcia dabbled in smut before moving into television (Silk Stalkings) and work for Francis Ford Coppola, David Lynch, and others.
Though Bob Cresse's Olympic International is mostly remembered for their own productions, they also followed the industry trend of buying foreign releases for cheap and then issuing them with new titles, and often new footage, on the grindhouse circuit. The grimy Touch Of Leather (1968), made in the U.K. with a nearly all-pseudonymous cast, appears to have aimed for U.S distribution from the get-go. It concerns the plummeting fortunes of boxing ring hopeful Gary (Steve Peters from the Dr. Who series) as he's set up for a fall by his slimy fight promoter, British character actor and television star Tommy Godfrey (Passport to Pimlico). Also with Terry Duggan (Murder By Decree), using his actual name, and - because Gary works at a Soho strip club - plenty of uncredited peelers.
Filmmaker Oliver Drake, known for three decades as director of B-movie westerns (Renegades of the Rio Grande), later turned his attention to exploitation films such as The Mummy and the Curse of the Jackals (1969) and this one, a "dirty" western that imagines actual Civil War-era Confederate terrorist group Quantrill's Raiders not as the enemy of abolitionists but as rapists and purveyors of forced prostitution. With Richard Smedley from The Suckers and Chuck Alford (Voodoo Heartbeat) among a cast of mostly unknowns.
Acclaimed British filmmaker Michael Powell (Black Narcissus) wrecked his career with this disturbing 1960 shocker. Though now considered a classic, at the time of its release many critics considered the film akin to pornography. Powell's protagonist Mark (Karlheinz Böehm from Playgirl After Dark) is a young camera technician with a terrible secret. With Moira Shearer from the director's The Red Shoes, Anna Massey (De Sade), Shirley Ann Wild For Kicks Field, and an appearance by pinup model Pamela Green (Legend of the Werewolf).
Leave it to Andy Milligan's distributor William Mishkin to take a seven-year-old French film, Crime au Concert Mayol, and dust it off for a grindhouse run as Palace of Nudes (1961). AKA Palace of Shame, it's set at former Paris cabaret and strip club the Concert Mayol. Comely Claude Godard, who later graced Julian Duvivier's The Female (1958) with Brigitte Bardot, is the cabaret's leading striptease artist Mado, survivor of a poisoning attempt and pawn in a murder investigation. Also with Jean-Pierre Kérien from Alain Resnais' Muriel (1963), cast here as a bumbling inspector, and Robert Berri (the 1947 Fantômas) as drug-dealing pimp Fred. The same year, Mishkin issued another of director Pierre Méré's potboilers, the 1955 Impasse des vertus, as Love At Night.
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