Corman's Swamp

 

SWAMP DIAMONDS-1956-In New Orleans during Mardi Gras, a female police Lt. Lee Hampton (Carole Mathews) poses as a hardened criminal to infiltrate The Nardo gang or at least the women serving life sentences for a jewelry robbery their men were executed for. Their leader is Josie Nardo (Marie Windsor) plus the flirty Billie (Jill Jarym) and the trigger happy high strung Vera (Beverly Garland). Hampton plans their escape and they head for a Bayou swamp to get their stash. When their boat springs a leak they confiscate a boat carrying oil speculator Bob (Mike Connors) and his dumb girlfriend Marie (Susan Cummings). Their guide is killed and the gang for some reason take the pair hostage. The women argue, fight, lust after Bob and verbally abuse Marie who tries to sell out Bob and winds up alligator bait when she tries to escape. They find the diamonds and get happy but Vera steals the diamonds (and Bob). When the remaining members go after her she tries to ambush them but is killed. Hampton over powers the remaining two and rescues Bob (who has no idea she's undercover) just as the police arrive. Ed Nelson (as a police officer) and Jonathan Haze (as a pickpocket) have small roles at the beginning of the film. 

Also known as SWAMP WOMEN, this kind of crazy in color women out of prison movie was made by Roger Corman a year after his first science fiction film (and third movie) THE DAY THE WORLD ENDED (also with Connors). The same year he also made IT CONQUERED THE WORLD and two westerns GUNSLINGER (also with Garland) and OKLAHOMA WOMAN. Parts of it are fairly improbable but it's still fun with Beverly Garland giving a good performance as the ruthless Vera.

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Bond Take-Off

KISS THE GIRLS AND MAKE THEM DIE-1966-Mike Connors is Kelly, an international James Bond like CIA agent in this tongue in cheek spy drama with comedy overtones, a co-production between Columbia Pictures and Dino De Laurentiis.. 

Kelly is in Brazil tailing a rich industrialist named Ardonian (Raf Vallone) and his connection with some missing women. Ardonian is in league with Red China in a plot to sterilize the US but in actuality he wants to sterilize the whole world except for himself! The missing women are kept in suspended animation until he needs them. Dorothy Provine (THE 30 FOOT BRIDE OF CANDY ROCK) is Susan Fleming, Ardonian's bimbo girlfriend who wears some really weird outfits and has a Rolls Royce with Aston Martin like features. Terry Thomas is her chauffeur who beats up 5 guys. Later, after it's revealed she is with British Intelligence, she and Kelly team up. They wind up in an underground lab where Provine ends up on a rocket. There's some dumb humor (including a slip on a banana peel) but the real highlight of this movie is Ardonian's massive desk and multi-screen TV monitoring system in a couple of scenes. There's great shots of Rio though. 

Beverly Adams (HOW TO STUFF A WILD BIKINI, TORTURE GARDEN) is one of the victims. Connors would star in the long running TV series MANNIX the next year. Co-director Henry Levin made a similar secret agent satire the same year, MURDERER'S ROW with Dean Martin as Matt Helm (which according to Mike Connors he almost played). 

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War! What Is It Good For?

SUICIDE BATTALION-AIP-1958 -B-movie genius Edward L. Cahn stikes again with this strange comedy drama set in the Pacific during WW2.

Hardnose Mike Conners leads the title squad which includes John Ashley and Russ Bender. Much of the film concerns the exploits of the troop while partying at a local watering hole (including Ashley courting a native girl). War is fun!!

Stock footage (of both US and Japanese armies, some of it quite graphic) abounds. When the mission finally gets underway the squad has a woman reporter (Jewell Lain) with them too! A lot of the usual soul searching ensues before they must destroy a captured base and retrieve some secret files. Connors (who starred in his first TV show TIGHTROPE the next year) even has time to fight a rival Lieutenant (Bing “Father Of Kurt” Russell) for the reporter’s affections. It’s fairly violent for the time and of course nearly everyone (except the leads) dies.

A narrator tells of a “cunning and savage enemy” and “the power crazed Japanese”, so obviously by ’58, the wounds of WW 2 still hadn’t closed.

SB was written by AIP vet Lou Rusoff (see CAT GIRL entry) and produced by Samuel Z. Arkoff. Music by Ronald Stein. Also starring Scott Peters, Walter Maslow, John McNamara and Sammee Tong.
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The Wrath of Cahn!

JET ATTACK-AIP-1958 -So in my continuing effort to drum up support for the under appreciated director Edward L. Cahn I present this obscure Korean War melodrama. It was his second war drama for the year (see SUICIDE BATTALION).

John Agar stars as Capt. Tom Arnett. He and his partner (Gregory Walcott who starred in PLAN 9 around this time ) and comic relief guy (James Dobson) drop behind enemy lines to rescue an army scientist who may still be alive. They are helped by local guerrillas led by Victor Sen Yung (also in SHE DEMONS the same year and soon to be cook Hop Sing on TV’s Bonanza). Audrey Totter plays a Russian doctor who helps the Communist hating Americans. She also provides Agar with a love interest.

As in SUICIDE BATTALION (and ROCKETSHIP X-M) everybody but Agar and the guy he came to rescue die. Leonard Strong leads the North Korean force of bad guys....

JA isn’t anything special.. In fact it’s a pretty standard “Communism must be crushed” war drama but director Cahn also made IT! THE TERROR FROM BEYOND SPACE and CURSE OF THE FACELESS MAN (both written by sci-fi author Jerome Bixby) the very same year!

Screenwriter Orville Hampton penned tons of movies including RIOT ON SUNSET STRIP (1967) and FRIDAY FOSTER (1975) and worked with Cahn again. Most notably on the next year’s incredible THE FOUR SKULLS OF JONATHAN DRAKE. His last work was for The Scooby Doo/Dynomutt Hour in 1976. He died in 1997.

The story credit goes to Mark Hanna who wrote ATTACK OF THE 5O FT. WOMAN the same year.

Star John Agar was never the world’s worst actor as he was often portrayed and gave some of his best performances in low budget craziness (see THE BRAIN FROM PLANET AROUS!). Here he is the likable but tough All American soldier fighting to keep the world free. His other horror movie in 1958 was Bert I. Gordon’s ATTACK OF THE PUPPET PEOPLE.

Writing some of the best low budget scores Ronald Stein’s soundtrack here is quite loud and governmental. It almost gives the movie a kind of documentary feel. When not helping out his friend Ed Wood on various productions producer Alex Gordon managed to produce some great stuff for AIP (including THE DAY THE WORLD ENDED). He produced THE ATOMIC SUBMARINE the next year. Co-AIP head James H. Nicholson was the executive producer.

SHAKE, RATTLE AND ROCK-AIP-1956-Dig this early peon to rock and roll, cats. It’s like crazy. The great low budget master of the ‘50’s Edward L. Cahn shows he’s no square and not only is rock and roll here to stay but it can reform kids and make them productive!

Mike “Touch” Connors stars as a local deejay who believes this new, primitive music is not only an art form but it can set teens on the path to the straight and narrow. He’s assisted by jive taking Axe (Sterling Holloway in a real gone performance, dad). They get Fats Domino and Joe Turner to perform at a party so the reforming wayward youths can raise $12,000 to start their own “Teen Town”. Unfortunately they run into opposition by group of local oldsters led by Douglas Dumbrille and Margaret Dumont who’s niece (Lisa Gaye) Touch is in love with. Another old timer Raymond Hatton appears as Dumont’s husband. Hatton (who really hams it up) played the doomed prospector in Corman’s DAY THE WORLD ENDED in which Connors played the villain. Another DTWE vet Paul Dubov (the radiation victim who always wants to eat raw meat) plays a gangster who tries to break up the teen club. The always recognizable Percy Helton plays a comic undertaker/reformer. It ends in a televised court room where Connors and Dumbrille have their showdown and subtitles are used to translate Axe’s hip talk!

Domino and Turner do two songs a piece and some guy named Tommy Charles (“The one you’ve all been waiting for”) does a song that doesn’t fit in at all. This is a fun time capsule of “the way it wasn’t but it’s nice to think it might have been”. It was written by AIP vet Lou Rusoff (see CAT GIRL entry). James Nicolson and Alex Gordon were the producers. Original music by Alexander Courage!

"Sacred cows make the best hamburger"-Mark Twain

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