Six Shes And A He (1963)
For years, the Florida-made cheesecake shocker Six Shes and A He (1963) was merely a footnote, given brief mention in the American Film Institute's Catalog of Motion Pictures of films from the sixties. But somehow, somewhere, the late Mike Vraney of Something Weird Video located a slightly incomplete print of the film and made it available on DVD-R. Prior to that, the film had been so overlooked overlooked that when I interviewed its star, the late Bill Rogers, in 1993 for ecco, the world of bizarre video, he neglected to mention it. Or perhaps his omission was intentional.
Rogers portrays "Fred Rogers," a fighter pilot (astronaut, according to the pressbook) who crash-lands in the Pacific Ocean and washes ashore on an island inhabited by six gold-bikini-clad women armed with spears. Forced to slave in the fields each day and sexually satisfy a different woman every night, the exhausted Rogers soon plots his escape with the aid of a turncoat. The two manage to elude capture, but only after one of the women has been speared through the navel and another has been beaten to death with a sponge.
Originally filmed as Love Goddesses of Blood Island, the jaw-dropping Six Shes and A He was directed by Sting of Death (1965) co-producer, drive-in owner, and building contractor Richard S. Flink (under the pseudonym "Gordon H. Heaver") from a script by Herschell Gordon Lewis regular Bill Kerwin. Keeping it in the family, Kerwin's brother Harry devised the outrageous - especially for 1963 - gore effects. In fact, Six Shes and A He has been credited by some as the first attempted imitation of Godfather of Gore Lewis' landmark Blood Feast from the same year.
As with Lewis' films, the proceedings are so absurd as to instantly strain credulity, and therein lies the appeal. The camp quotient explodes in the scene where Rogers sways ecstatically like Stevie Wonder as he seemingly pretends to play an imaginary keyboard. An unseen vocalist croons the wince-inducing theme "Love Goddess," purportedly written by Al Jacobs, the songwriter behind the patriotic anthem "This Is My Country." (Though the vocals are credited to "Neil Patrick," I suspect that it's actually the pipes of jack-of-all-trades Rogers.) In the background, the Love Goddesses strut and gesticulate like drunk interpretive dancers on a set built around a hideous Romanesque swimming pool. It's the only clip you'll need to set the tone for your next tiki party.
Even in its current 46 minute runtime, Six Shes and A He is a test of patience. The wooden acting leaves no doubt why the cast's filmographies are scant, with Rogers being the exception. Sets inexplicably switch from an actual beach to godawful astroturf and potted plant imitations of a tropical forest. A flashback scene featuring the disemboweling and decapitation (by hand!) of a captive soldier looks as though it's spliced in from another film, with Carol Wintress (as Rebecca) decked out in dragon-lady makeup and grimacing like the voodoo doll that terrorized Karen Black inTrilogy of Terror.
Bill Kerwin's script could have been ripped from the pages of such trashy rags as True Adventures ("The Man-Killing Girls of Lepu"), Sir! ("Duke Moore's 3 Years As A Stud Slave"), and Exotic Adventures ("Island Of Love-Starved Women"). These overblown fantasies take an odd turn, however, in Six Shes and A He, as male hegemony is ultimately undermined: the eventual escape would be doomed to failure but for the heroic actions of a woman, as in Russ Meyer's Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! (1966). All considered, Flink's cheesy costume pageant better reflects the turbulent sexual zeitgeist of 1963 than Tony Richardson's Tom Jones, Joseph L. Mankiewicz's mega-million megabomb Cleopatra, or any other of the year's high-profile films.
A not-quite-complete (but all you need) version of Six Shes and A He is available from Something Weird Video.
Rogers portrays "Fred Rogers," a fighter pilot (astronaut, according to the pressbook) who crash-lands in the Pacific Ocean and washes ashore on an island inhabited by six gold-bikini-clad women armed with spears. Forced to slave in the fields each day and sexually satisfy a different woman every night, the exhausted Rogers soon plots his escape with the aid of a turncoat. The two manage to elude capture, but only after one of the women has been speared through the navel and another has been beaten to death with a sponge.
Originally filmed as Love Goddesses of Blood Island, the jaw-dropping Six Shes and A He was directed by Sting of Death (1965) co-producer, drive-in owner, and building contractor Richard S. Flink (under the pseudonym "Gordon H. Heaver") from a script by Herschell Gordon Lewis regular Bill Kerwin. Keeping it in the family, Kerwin's brother Harry devised the outrageous - especially for 1963 - gore effects. In fact, Six Shes and A He has been credited by some as the first attempted imitation of Godfather of Gore Lewis' landmark Blood Feast from the same year.
As with Lewis' films, the proceedings are so absurd as to instantly strain credulity, and therein lies the appeal. The camp quotient explodes in the scene where Rogers sways ecstatically like Stevie Wonder as he seemingly pretends to play an imaginary keyboard. An unseen vocalist croons the wince-inducing theme "Love Goddess," purportedly written by Al Jacobs, the songwriter behind the patriotic anthem "This Is My Country." (Though the vocals are credited to "Neil Patrick," I suspect that it's actually the pipes of jack-of-all-trades Rogers.) In the background, the Love Goddesses strut and gesticulate like drunk interpretive dancers on a set built around a hideous Romanesque swimming pool. It's the only clip you'll need to set the tone for your next tiki party.
Even in its current 46 minute runtime, Six Shes and A He is a test of patience. The wooden acting leaves no doubt why the cast's filmographies are scant, with Rogers being the exception. Sets inexplicably switch from an actual beach to godawful astroturf and potted plant imitations of a tropical forest. A flashback scene featuring the disemboweling and decapitation (by hand!) of a captive soldier looks as though it's spliced in from another film, with Carol Wintress (as Rebecca) decked out in dragon-lady makeup and grimacing like the voodoo doll that terrorized Karen Black inTrilogy of Terror.
Bill Kerwin's script could have been ripped from the pages of such trashy rags as True Adventures ("The Man-Killing Girls of Lepu"), Sir! ("Duke Moore's 3 Years As A Stud Slave"), and Exotic Adventures ("Island Of Love-Starved Women"). These overblown fantasies take an odd turn, however, in Six Shes and A He, as male hegemony is ultimately undermined: the eventual escape would be doomed to failure but for the heroic actions of a woman, as in Russ Meyer's Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! (1966). All considered, Flink's cheesy costume pageant better reflects the turbulent sexual zeitgeist of 1963 than Tony Richardson's Tom Jones, Joseph L. Mankiewicz's mega-million megabomb Cleopatra, or any other of the year's high-profile films.
A not-quite-complete (but all you need) version of Six Shes and A He is available from Something Weird Video.