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Wednesday, December 2, 2015
Psychotronic Movie of the Week: Johnny Cash in Five Minutes To Live (1961)
Posted by Ted Cogswell at 3:49 PM 1 comments
Labels: 1961, American International Pictures, Johnny Cash, psychotronic movies, Ted Cogswell, Vic Tayback
Wednesday, November 25, 2015
Psychotronic Movie of the Week Returns! Spend your Thanksgiving with BLOOD FREAK!
I'm bringing the PSYCHOTRONIC MOVIE OF THE WEEK back to the Rock 'n' Soul Ichiban blog and I'm kicking off version 2.0 with my own favorite Thanksgiving cinematic tradition, Brad F. Ginter's BLOOD FREAK.
Ginter's filmography as a director includes just five titles, and it's three that he's primarily remembered for today - the awful biker flick DEVIL RIDER (1970), the bizarre Veronica Lake swan song FLESH FEAST (1970), and today's feature, BLOOD FREAK (1972).
Steve Hawkes, whose previous acting resume was highlighted by two low-budget, shot in Florida Tarzan movies, co-wrote the screenplay with Ginter and stars as Herschell, a Nam vet biker who gets invited to a party by a beautiful young lady and well, one thing leads to another and before we know it, Herschell is addicted to the pot! He ends up eating some chemically altered turkey and when he wakes up he's become a monster with a giant turkey head who needs to feast on the blood of drug addicts to satisfy his cravings. In the end, the only thing that can save him is turning to God - the film was described by Shock Cinema's Steven Puchalski as "the world's first Christian, anti-drug splatter movie!" And if that plot wasn't enough of a trainwreck, wait until you get a load of Ginter himself as the narrator, sitting at a desk in front of faux wooden paneling, talking about "the human body as a mixing bowl," spewing Reefer Madness-style anti-drug rhetoric while smoking a cigarette. At one point he breaks into a coughing fit that only adds to the delicious (unintentional?) irony. You would think they would have done another take, but I guess it wasn't in the budget.
Posted by Ted Cogswell at 4:05 PM 2 comments
Labels: 1972, Blood Freak, psychotronic movies, Something Weird Video, Ted Cogswell, Thanksgiving
Sunday, June 15, 2014
Happy birthday Herschell Gordon Lewis!
The great Herschell Gordon Lewis celebrates his 85th birthday today, enjoy this 2010 documentary on the one and only "godfather of gore"!
Posted by Ted Cogswell at 1:05 PM 0 comments
Labels: Herschell Gordon Lewis, psychotronic movies, Ted Cogswell
Saturday, March 22, 2014
Psychotronic Movie of the Week: Skidoo (1968)
Posted by Ted Cogswell at 8:53 PM 1 comments
Labels: Groucho Marx, Hippies, Jackie Gleason, Psychedelic, psychotronic movies, Ted Cogswell
Thursday, March 13, 2014
Psychotronic Movie of the Week: At Midnight I'll Take Your Soul (1964)
"In a dream saw a figure dragging me to a cemetery. Soon he left me in front of a headstone, there were two dates, of my birth and my death. People at home were very frightened, called a Priest because they thought I was possessed. I woke up screaming, and at that time decided to do a movie unlike anything I had done. He was born at that moment, the character would become a legend: Coffin Joe. The character began to take shape in my mind and in my life."This was the first Coffin Joe film. It was followed by This Night I'll Possess Your Corpse (1967), and, forty years later, Embodiment of Evil (2008), completing what is known as the Coffin Joe Trilogy. He revived Coffin Joe many times over the years, though not always as the central character, in films including Awakening of the Beast (1970), The Bloody Exorcism of Coffin Joe (1974), and Hallucinations of a Deranged Mind (1978).
Posted by Ted Cogswell at 2:45 PM 0 comments
Labels: Brazil, Coffin Joe, Jose Mojica Marins, psychotronic movies, Ted Cogswell
Sunday, February 23, 2014
Psychotronic Movie of the Week: Werewolves on Wheels (1971)
Posted by Ted Cogswell at 4:36 PM 1 comments
Labels: bikers, occult, psychotronic movies, Satanists, Ted Cogswell, Werewolf
Thursday, January 23, 2014
Psychotronic Movie of the Week: The Sadist (1963)
1963 - Fairway International Pictures - D: James Landis - S: Arch Hall, Jr., Richard Walden, Marilyn Manning, Don Russell, Helen Hovey
Arch Hall, Jr. only appeared in a handful of films in the early 1960s, all produced by his father, Arch Hall, Sr., but his star will shine forever in the psychotronic universe for his turns in The Choppers, Eegah!, Wild Guitar, and this, perhaps his greatest moment. He plays the sadist of the title, Charlie Tibbs, who, along with his mute girlfriend Judy, terrorize a trio of teachers who stall out in the desert on their way to a ballgame at Dodger Stadium. Hall is a man possessed in this film - a sneering psycho ready to snap at any moment. If you notice some sharp camera work while you're watching, there's good reason for that, as the cinematographer was none other than a young Vilmos Zsigmond, who had previously worked on Ray Dennis Steckler's The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies, but would go on to do award winning work on films such as McCabe and Mrs. Miller, Close Encouters of the Third Kind, Blow Out, and The Deer Hunter.
Cast and crew on the set |
Posted by Ted Cogswell at 3:45 PM 3 comments
Labels: Arch Hall Jr., psychotronic movies, Ted Cogswell
Sunday, January 12, 2014
Psychotronic Movie of the Week: Frankenstein Meets the Space Monster (1965)
Posted by Ted Cogswell at 9:08 PM 3 comments
Labels: 1965, psychotronic movies, Ted Cogswell, The Poets