1968 - Paramount Pictures - D: Otto Preminger S: Jackie Gleason, Carol Channing, Alexandra Hay, Groucho Marx, Frankie Avalon, Fred Clark, Michael Constantine, Frank Gorshin, John Phillip Law, Peter Lawford, Burgess Meredith, George Raft, Caesar Romero, Mickey Rooney, Arnold Stang, Slim Pickens, Richard Kiel, Harry Nilsson.
Now here's something completely different. And by different, I mean different compared to,... well, just about anything I've ever seen. Long left stashed in the Paramount vaults and only wondered about by those who missed it in its initial run, this is Otto Preminger's misguided attempt at one of those "generation gap" films that were becoming more and more prevalent around 1968. The plot is comedic mash-up of hippiesploitation and a gangster movie. Jackie Gleason is a retired mobster living a legit life with his wife (Carol Channing) and their hippie daughter. One day, a mob boss (named "God" and played by Groucho Marx!) sends a couple of guys over to pull Jackie out of retirement for one last hit on a snitch (played by Mickey Rooney). Resistant at first, he eventually relents and gets put in the same prison as Mickey so he can do the hit. But before that can happen, someone slips "the Great One" some LSD, Gleason trips balls, and his whole worldview is blown away. In a sense, it almost becomes a PRO-drug movie if you can believe it! While he's in the slammer, his house becomes a playground for his daughter's hippie friends, and eventually Carol Channing, dressed in full pirate regalia leads the kids in a siege of God's boat. Oh, and did I mention there's musical numbers? Or that it was endorsed by Timothy Leary? Yeah, this is one strange piece of celluloid - worth watching for its jaw-dropping absurdity, the parade of famous Hollywood actors who somehow signed on for this, and its time-capsule quality, but mostly because the scene where Jackie Gleason trips in his prison cell is positively epic.
1964 - Industria Cinematografica Apolo (Brazil) - D/S: Jose Mojica Marins
Today's selection marks the occasion of its creator's 78th birthday. Jose Mojica Marins, better known to the world as Coffin Joe, was born on March 13, 1936, and is still alive and kicking, frequently seen on tv in his native Brazil. He created the Coffin Joe character in 1963, for this film, possibly his greatest work, At Midnight I Will Take Your Soul. Marins described the conception of Coffin Joe in a 2006 interview:
"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).
And now, our feature presentation.
Special bonus feature, Damned: The Strange World of Jose Mojica Marins (2001 documentary)
In what might be the first (and only?) record label established solely to promote the musical stylings of children, Westport Records existed in Kansas City, Mo. from 1955 - 1962.
Westport put out a handful of great hillbilly, rockabilly, and r&b records, by artists such as Milt Dickey, Alvis Wayne, & Big Bob Dougherty.
1971 - A South Street Production - D: Michael Levesque - S: Stephen Oliver, D.J. Anderson, Duece Berry, Billy Gray, Barry McGuire, Severn Darden
The Psychotronic Movie the Week is back and this time I've got a real doozy for 'ya, a one of a kind classic brought to you by the king of the biker flicks, Joe Solomon. A biker gang called The Devil's Advocates come across a cult of Satanic monks in the California desert. One of the gang's "mamas" is cast under a spell in her sleep and led into an occult ritual that weds her to the Devil. When she returns to the Advocates she bites her old man and turns him into a werewolf who rips apart another gang member and his woman who had split from camp to go get it on. The gang buries the dead the next morning and move on, but every night more grisly attacks follow. This one drags a bit in the middle, but the first and final acts are pure psychotronic bliss and it features a great guitar soundtrack by Don Gere, enjoy!
Too many mini-skirts? Well, let's not get all carried away. Further study on the topic of country music and mini-skirts awaits you over on the main WFMU blog.
All right, a Pontiac and a Ferrari are two different things, I know that. Just go with it, because both the song and the ad are pretty damn great. I admit to being a little queasy about the tiger skin, but maybe it's the skin of a very old tiger that died peacefully of natural causes. Or maybe not.
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.
To be quite frank, I am pretty sure I would be unable to fully appreciate the music made by the Ball State University Singers, but I can't quit admiring this fantastic photo. Via the Ball State University Digital Archives.
1965 - Allied Artists - D: Robert Gaffney - S: Marilyn Hanold, James Karen, Lou Cutell
In The Psychotronic Encyclopedia of Film, Michael Weldon's review of Frankenstein Meets the Space Monster said it all in the first two sentences: "Don't miss. It's the worst." The plot is about a Martian princess and her flamboyant dwarf assistant coming to Earth in search of women to help repopulate their planet. They both have hilariously un-subtle homoerotic undertones. There's an android astronaut named Frank (the "Frankenstein" of the title), who ends up fighting the Martians' giant monster they keep chained up in their spaceship (played by an uncredited Bruce Glover). There's also some groovy soundtrack music, including "That's the Way It's Got to Be" by the Poets. And that's pretty much it. All in all, a mindless but fun flick that cruises along and delivers plenty of laughs. This was Gaffney's only credit as a director, but he later showed up as the DP on Superfly T.N.T. in 1973. Enjoy!
Mike Vraney and Lisa Petrucci, photo credit: Lars Erik Holmquist
Shocking news awaited us as we awoke this morning. Mike
Vraney, the founder of Something Weird Video, had passed away from lung cancer
at the age of 56. An official statement from SWV said, "Mike was a very
private person and didn't want anyone, except his closest friends, family and
colleagues, to know about his illness. He went through aggressive chemotherapy
and radiation treatments for over a year, but sadly the cancer spread and
cruelly took him from us."
The news hit those of us who have been fans of
his life's work for the last three decades like a ton of bricks. You see, his was not merely just another home
video company. Founded by Vraney in Seattle in 1990, Something Weird unearthed
thousands of films and entire b-movie and exploitation sub-genres from the
dustbins of history. Especially back in the early and mid-90s, when information
on the kinds of films he championed was not widely disseminated or easily
found, the Something Weird Video catalog was a revelation. The films were
categorized under headings like "Untamed Video", "Sexy Shockers
From the Vault", "Grindhouse Follies", "Spies, Thighs &
Private Eyes", "Crime Wave USA", "Sci-Fi Late Night
Creature Feature Show", "Wrasslin' She Babes", "Nudist Camp
Classics", "Twisted Sex", and the perfectly succinct "Big
Bust Loops". I and countless other intrepid cinematic explorers poured
over those catalogs, with their eye-catching graphics, tidbits of biographical
and historical information, and original ad mats and poster art, like holy
grails. We ordered these films through the mail, and some of us were lucky
enough to live near adventurous mom and pop video stores that actually carried
them. My own local mecca was Scotty Cooper's Video Bazaar in Metuchen, NJ, who
always stocked a large collection of SWV titles on VHS, their colorful spines
practically jumping off the shelf and into my curious hands, enticing me to
take them home and dive into a world that had been lost to time, or may have
existed only in the mind of a single, twisted auteur who died penniless and
unknown, but whose life's labor was finally being presented to a
(comparatively) wide audience.
He brought the films of people like David F. Friedman,
Herschell Gordon Lewis, Andy Milligan, Doris Wishman, and Harry Novak to public
attention and helped spread the gospel of the "forty thieves", a
loosely-affiliated cabal of roadshow impresarios whose traveling exploitation
shows in the early decades of cinema played fast and loose with local vice ordinances as they zig-zagged back and forth across the
countryside. And he didn't merely do it on a subterranean, cult level. In the
early 2000's, he pulled off something that we all would have thought impossible
just a few years earlier (and which would have been impossible only a few years
later), when he made a distribution deal with Image Entertainment which led to the then ubiquitous Borders Books chain to stock Something Weird
Video DVDs in their big box stores nation-wide. Suddenly, middle Americans
looking for the latest Adam Sandler or Sandra Bullock movie might accidentally
come across The Monster of Camp Sunshine, Color Me Blood Red, or Satan in High
Heels. He also got the films exposure on mainstream television, first with a
series on the USA Network in the mid-90s, Reel Wild Cinema (hosted by Sandra
Bernhardt), and more recently with the Something Weird On Demand channel
available through Comcast cable. Today, we take it for granted that these kinds
of movies are part of our collective kitschy Americana, but Vraney blazed a
trail, without a map, not knowing how it was going to end up. His was a mission
fueled by personal passion, and without his work, we'd all be living in a less
interesting world.
Mike is survived by his wife, Lisa Petrucci, and two
children, Mark and Danielle. Our deepest sympathies go out to his family, his
friends, and everyone else who will miss him.
Now lets take a look at some of the familiar images that we
may never have even known about if not for Mike Vraney via the famous classic
opening bumper that kicked off every Something Weird Video release.
